<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>dare not take what I shall die to want by noodlefrog</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28258323">dare not take what I shall die to want</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlefrog/pseuds/noodlefrog'>noodlefrog</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Lifetime's Work, But Worth The Effort [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>69 (Sex Position), A Fun New Sex Technique I’m Calling “Sexy Degloving”, Aziraphale Has a Vulva (Good Omens), Body Image, Bondage, Bubble Bath, Consentacles, Crack Treated Seriously, Crowley Has A Vulva (Good Omens), Crowley is bad at being the recipient of gentleness, Crowley's Love Language is Acts of Service (Good Omens), Cunnilingus, Don't copy to another site, Don't worry, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Face-Sitting, Feels, Fluff and Smut, Humor, I want to interest you in the lucrative world of product placement in E rated fanfiction, I will make that an official tag if I have to do it myself, Improvised Sex Toys, Ineffable Spouses, Ineffable Wives | Female Aziraphale/Female Crowley (Good Omens), KONG brand chew toys please return my calls, Least of all me, Mildly Tentacle-y Angelic True Form, Monsterfucker, Mutual Monsterfuckery, Non-Penetrative Sex, Non-Penetrative Sex Toys, Non-Penetrative Tentacle Sex, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Oops, Oral Sex, Other, Partial True Form Sex, Porn with Feelings, Rewarding your demon's appropriate chewing behaviors, Slice of Life, Squirting, Tongue Fucking, Vagina Dentata, Vaginal Fingering, Wet &amp; Messy, adding that tag bc I love it, and it has teeth, as it always will in this series, because even if you know you're loved you can still feel a little monstrous sometimes, but maybe a little Christmas flavored by accident, if you think this tag list is long get ready for the novel hidden in my author notes, just going to tag it in case, kidding, mild body horror, no injuries, no one's cis here, not a christmas fic, please no one tell KONG this fic exists, the agony of your lover being too nice to you, the author has really strong feelings about wet socks, the line between body horror and xeno can be a thin one, the true form is partial but there's nothing partial about the sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:53:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,903</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28258323</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlefrog/pseuds/noodlefrog</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They’d been shagging like a couple of rabbits for weeks now. Well, <i>Aziraphale</i> at least could be described as shagging like a rabbit—soft and eager and cute and very, <i>very</i> energetic. If Crowley were to be described as shagging like any kind of rabbit, it would have to be one that was more like the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog than it was to anything penned by Beatrix Potter. Sure, she was also very eager and energetic, but she was sharp where she ought to be soft, and those looking to tangle with her needed to take advanced precautions lest she try to rip out their throats.<br/></p><hr/><p>Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is new, but going well, even if Crowley still finds herself struggling to believe that all of this is something she gets to keep. After all, you don't unlearn the idea that you're untouchable in just a few weeks.<br/>That's right, it's <i>another</i> crack fic about pussy teeth with too many emotions in it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale &amp; Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Lifetime's Work, But Worth The Effort [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026520</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>89</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. when is a monster not a monster?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello, welcome back! I’ve been informed that <i>Gnawing</i> was a few people’s second favorite vagina dentata story, which is a sentence I wish I could add to my résumé. I really liked writing it, too, to the point that the story wormed its way into my brain and made me write even more of it. It’s a series now! I am very excited to present to you all (as <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sk3tch/profile">Sk3tch</a> called it) the “2th” installment in that series.<br/>If this is your first time here, you don’t <i>have</i> to read the previous one before reading this one (this is a very plot-light series), but it may make a bit more sense if you read them in order. All you really need to know going in, though, is that Crowley has a vagina dentata and Aziraphale loves her very much.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Content Notes:</b> As with the last fic, I’m going to give another heads-up for issues of body insecurity and discomfort with one’s genitals. Specifically, with one’s vagina dentata that has teeth and involuntarily extendable eel-like jaws that can and will crunch through bone if given the chance. I really cannot stress enough what kind of fic this is.<br/>There’s less angst in this one than the previous one, but Crowley is still an anxious and self-conscious mess.<br/>If you’re wanting to know in advance what, specifically, the “bondage” tag up there means, I’ve included a context spoiler for that scene as the first bit of the end note.</p><p>...For no particular reason, have a picture of a statue of <a href="https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/746927690224894032/790456620282937404/4443acf4ab2ce19d3c65c690fafd68ec.png">Hercules prying apart the jaws of the Nemean Lion</a> before you head into the fic proper. This particular statue is apparently housed in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, which all y’all geography nerds out there might recognize as being outside of London. Come play with me in this space anyway.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It had been nearly four months since the world hadn’t ended. Nearly four months since Aziraphale had taken Crowley on a life-changing picnic, nearly four months since Crowley told her she loved her. Nearly four months since they decided to become partners. (…Lovers? Girlfriends? The terminology was still a bit squishy, but Crowley found she didn’t mind a bit.)</p><p>It had also been six weeks since they’d first made love. To be specific, six weeks and three days. Crowley hadn’t intended to memorize the time so precisely, but it had burned itself indelibly into her mind anyway. She wasn’t sure when she’d stop counting the days, or if she ever would, but each morning when she woke up now, she was struck with the strange feeling that she’d stolen a precious day she’d never been supposed to get. None of this, neither the relationship nor the sex, was supposed to be something she got to have. She did have it, though, and she had absolutely no intention of ever letting it go again.</p><p>So, ever since that day six weeks and three days ago, they’d been shagging like a couple of rabbits. Well, <i>Aziraphale</i> at least could be described as shagging like a rabbit—soft and eager and cute and very, <i>very</i> energetic. If Crowley were to be described as shagging like any kind of rabbit, it would have to be one that was more like the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog than it was to anything penned by Beatrix Potter. Sure, she was also very eager and energetic, but she was sharp where she ought to be soft, and those looking to tangle with her needed to take advanced precautions lest she try to rip out their throats.</p><p>Aziraphale, let it be said, was the undisputed reigning champion of those advanced precautions. Six weeks and three days ago, she had been presented with Crowley’s unique anatomical situation and all the complications that it brought into their potential sex life, and instead of giving it up as a lost cause, had figured out a way to make sex <i>work</i> for the two of them. Even Crowley herself had been about ready to give up on it, but her clever angel had found a solution.</p><p>If the cost of that solution was the occasional twinge of embarrassment that arose whenever Crowley remembered that the sleek black toys that they used in the bedroom had originally been designed with chew-happy Golden Retrievers in mind instead of befanged demonic vaginas… well. Crowley did embarrassing things almost every day, most of them by accident, and <i>this</i> kind of mildly embarrassing thing came with the bonus of knee-trembling orgasms. She’d take it. And take it and take it, any way Aziraphale was willing to offer it.</p><p>It was all terribly romantic and sexy and only sometimes left Crowley feeling like her heart had been hooked up to a car battery and made to feel six thousand years’ worth of emotion all at once.</p><p>Even though she’d had some time to adjust to this new version of her life, Crowley sometimes found herself struggling. It was hard to open up after millennia of keeping herself sealed up tighter than the most terrified little oyster to ever contemplate its grim fate in the back room of Petronius’s restaurant. She, of course, considered that image to be both a twat joke and a genuine observation of the fear she felt whenever Aziraphale had the audacity to be too nice to her.</p><p>Four months wasn't that long in the lifetime of a demon. Neither, for that matter, was six weeks and three days. She’d lived her life for six thousand years believing—at least on some subconscious level—that being cast out during the Fall had left her damaged. It had definitely changed her, physically as well as spiritually, and molded her into a new shape that had initially felt so very unfamiliar. The question had always been about how <i>much</i> it had changed her. Ask any other demon and they would say they had all been twisted into something unloved and unloving and unlovable. Crowley had considered the possibility, but hadn’t let it torture her. She’d accepted it as much as she could and then pushed it aside, rather than letting it make her bitter like the same thought had done to many of the others Downstairs.</p><p>What would have been the use in moping about it, really? There was a whole new Earth waiting to be explored, and she’d taken to it like whatever it was that ducks took to. She got her legs underneath her—wonderful things, legs, yet so very tricky sometimes—and set off to find out which parts of the human experience were fun and which parts made her want to stay drunk for a century. Played her part in the ineffable numbers game that was tempting souls to Hell while the other side tried to inspire them towards Heaven. Figured out along the way that sometime around the dawn of time the humans figured out how to tempt and inspire themselves far better than any immortal ever could. Realized that, for better or worse, all of the angels and demons were mostly redundant.</p><p>She’d made friends with an angel who sometimes seemed like just as much of a disillusioned outsider as Crowley herself felt like. Then she’d fallen in love with her. Fallen in <i>lust</i> with her, too, for all the good she’d thought that would ever do her. There towards the end she started to suspect that the angel might have even done the same. Crowley hadn’t pushed for it, assuming it would never get the chance to become any sort of real relationship that either of them would actually want. After all, their sides would kill them if they found out. She just enjoyed the time they got together and let the rest of it fade into the background, just one more unfairness in a long line of great cosmic unfairnesses to be shouldered until the world ended.</p><p>Until, against all odds, it didn’t. Until the biggest risk in Crowley and Aziraphale’s long lives paid off, and their doomed-to-fail plan to avert the apocalypse <i>worked</i> somehow, even in the face of their dazzling levels of incompetence. And it had come with an unexpected perk. They’d been freed from their sides, freed from everything that for so long had kept them apart. They were suddenly able to do whatever they pleased and neither Heaven nor Hell could do a thing about it.</p><p>Crowley and Aziraphale hadn’t wasted much time with it. That very first morning after the day of their trials, there had been bad coffee and a picnic basket and some long-waited for confessions. Then, a bit later, some kisses.</p><p>For the first time in her memory, Crowley had found that she was completely, uncomplicatedly happy. Aziraphale was happy, too. Even after finding out her new lover’s body was literally built to hurt anyone who tried to bring Crowley pleasure, she was apparently still happy. She found a workaround because she was clever and determined and (for some reason) very in love with one specific demon.</p><p>These days, what Crowley wanted more than anything else was to be able to pack the ugly rest of the past, all those six thousand years of terror and discomfort and separation and feelings of being unloveable, into a box to be ignored forever. She couldn’t always do it, though. The past was loud and messy and jagged and did not want to be ignored.</p><p>In the months since she first heard Aziraphale say “I love you,” Crowley had mostly taught herself not to have a fit every time the angel said it. In the weeks that had passed since their first time having sex, Crowley had been trying to learn to accept the other things Aziraphale told her, too. Things like how the angel thought every piece of Crowley’s body was desirable and beautiful and loved, even the sharp pieces. Crowley was trying to learn not to question this like she questioned everything else. Not because she feared retaliation for asking, but because she thought she might really like the answer if she just let herself believe it.</p><p>It helped, in a way, how often Aziraphale said those things. How often she flirted, teased. Did little things that supported the idea that she was genuinely attracted to Crowley in spite of—<i>because of?</i>—the strange way she’d been built. A lot of the time, Aziraphale said those things with words or gestures, but sometimes she did it with touch. Gifts, too, Crowley supposed, thinking of the ever-expanding collection of external vibrators that was beginning to take over both of their flats.</p><p>Each of those little moments was another piece of evidence she could remember in those times when her anxious brain tried to convince her that Aziraphale was only pretending to find her attractive out of some kind of misguided obligation, or because she loved her.</p><p>Crowley recalled one such moment when, during one of their recent art museum dates, Aziraphale had paused to pointedly observe a statue of Hercules grappling with the jaws of the Nemean Lion. Aziraphale had then casually stretched and flexed her arms, turned to look directly at Crowley, and waggled her bloody eyebrows like some kind of virtue-plundering vaudeville scamp. Naturally, Crowley had then promptly choked on the wine she had been drinking, blushed the approximate color of said wine, and fucked off to another exhibit to look at some old vases in a valiant effort to avoid discorporating.</p><p>But as silly and stupid as it had been… she liked it. She liked that they could joke like this, that their sex life wasn’t some dire thing that had to be taken seriously. As a person who had believed until very recently that partnered sex would be impossible for her, Crowley was now a firm believer in the idea that the only kind of sex she was interested in was the kind it was okay to laugh about.</p><p>So, when Aziraphale had turned up to Crowley's flat this morning dangling a new toy from her fingertips like the tease she was, Crowley just grinned and laughed the kind of laugh that came out of her nose.</p><p>“Come inside, you harlot,” she said, making room in the concrete hall for Aziraphale to cross the threshold. “Before the neighbors see you.”</p><p>“Even if they had seen me,” Aziraphale countered, “no one would have suspected a thing.”</p><p>“Is that because you’ve miracled yourself inconspicuous or because you’re holding an object that no human being would ever seriously consider to be sexual in nature?” Crowley asked, holding out a hand to take the angel’s coat. Instead, she was handed Aziraphale’s brand new purchase.</p><p>This one was made from the same material as their usual toy, that same thick, black, durable rubber. It was thinner, though, and textured all over with ridges, which was... intriguing, to say the least. Most notably, though, it had a rope threaded through the core of it in a big loop like a handle. Very much like a handle, really, as it was quite obviously the kind of toy humans bought to play tug of war with their hounds.</p><p>“As a group, human beings, as you and I both well know,” Aziraphale said, hanging her coat on the hook and disappearing deeper into the echoey flat, “have been known to find anything and everything <i>sexual in nature.”</i></p><p>“That doesn’t answer the question!” Crowley called after her, bouncing the rope loop on her palm.</p><p>By the time Crowley had caught up with her again, Aziraphale had let herself into Crowley’s plant room. She gave herself the luxury of a few moments spent admiring her angel as her angel admired the plants. Stripped of her coat, Crowley could see that Aziraphale had taken a slight deviation from her usual sense of fashion today. Still very dapper, still wearing a bowtie, of course, as the ridiculous creature considered herself half-dressed if she ever went outside without one. In place of her usual waistcoat, though, she’d opted to wear a thick cable-knit jumper. It was a fuzzy thing, cream colored and soft-looking, possibly chosen in deference to the mid-December chill, or possibly out of a desire to maximize potential coziness.</p><p>Whatever the reason, though, it looked remarkably touchable. Crowley gave in to that desire in record time, slipping in behind Aziraphale as she stroked the glossy leaves of one of the <i>Monstera deliciosas.</i> She tested out her earlier hypothesis by winding her arms around Aziraphale’s waist and giving her a gentle squeeze, and discovered that <i>yes,</i> the jumper was every bit as soft and touchable as she’d imagined. The slight difference in their heights was just enough to let her rest her nose against the back of Aziraphale’s head. There was some kind of product in her hair, some warm vanilla scent clinging to her short blonde curls and mingling brilliantly with the smell of her skin. Crowley breathed in deeply and then, just because she could, pressed a kiss to the back of Aziraphale’s head.</p><p>“Your plants are looking healthy,” Aziraphale murmured, leaning back into Crowley’s embrace. “So shiny and green…”</p><p>“Nuh. None of that now,” Crowley said, gently walking them both backwards out of the plant room. “I’ve got them all trained up, can’t have you spoiling them.”</p><p>“Spoiling them?”</p><p>“They know what’s expected of them. If you start babying them, they’ll forget. They’ll start to think they can do anything they want.”</p><p>Aziraphale tilted her head to look back at Crowley. “What trouble, exactly, do you think your plants will get into if they’re left unsupervised?”</p><p>Crowley made a face. “Angel, you have no idea. Growing crooked. Blooming when they shouldn’t. Signaling rude words at the others across the room in semaphore. It would be total anarchy if they weren’t kept in line.”</p><p>Rolling her eyes, Aziraphale pivoted to face Crowley fully and took her by the hand. “Right. Well, you told me you had plans for the day, my dear, and I assume that they involve more than bullying the greenery.”</p><p>“I do, and yes. The plants are totally uninvolved. It looks like you may have plans of your own, though,” Crowley said, lifting the toy by its rope up to mutual eye level.</p><p>Aziraphale gave her a coy smile. “That doesn’t have to be for today, love. Or ever. I just thought it might be a nice option for us. Something new to try. Another little experiment.”</p><p>“Hmm… Well, I have booked us a very busy day… Every single hour accounted for, so there’s not much room to fit anything else in…” Pretending to think it over, Crowley stepped closer and closer to her angel, until the arm holding the toy was draped over Aziraphale’s shoulder and they were close enough to kiss. “I may be able to pencil it in. Should I put it down for <i>Sexual Experimentation: Ropes and Rubber Edition,</i> or should I be a bit more discreet and call it <i>An Intimate Liaison With Monsieur KONG?”</i></p><p>That earned her, in order, a heavy sigh and then a kiss. “Did you really book us a terribly busy day?”</p><p>Crowley shook her head. “Nah. There’s no schedule at all, just a list of ideas up here,” she said, tapping her temple just above her sigil.</p><p>“Oh, good. I’d hate to feel rushed when it’s time for me to give you the seeing-to you deserve, dearheart. You know I can do a quick job of it, but I’d rather take my time with you.”</p><p>After a brief struggle with words wherein Crowley’s tongue seemed to finally try to make a break for it and escape down her throat, Crowley gathered her wits enough to answer.</p><p>“I’d make time, you know,” she said. “Doesn’t matter what else I had in mind. Always time for you.”</p><p>“I know you would.” Aziraphale kissed her again, this time on the tip of her nose. She held Crowley close, warm hands resting on her bony hips. “So, what’s first?”</p><p>“Have you eaten?”</p><p>Aziraphale shook her head. “Breakfast?” She asked, then flashed a conspiratorial look over her shoulder in the direction of the toy. “Or perhaps brunch, if you were wanting to lounge about the flat a bit longer.”</p><p>It was a terribly tempting offer, but…</p><p>“Let’s get some food in you first,” Crowley said. Then, because she was allowed to flirt now, she added, “I’m afraid we may both need it for strength in the strenuous hours to come.”</p><p>“It may be for the best that we wait, anyway. I do actually have an idea I’d like to talk to you about before we’d try anything with it, and we can discuss it over breakfast. Where would you like to go?”</p><p>Crowley had a sudden image of herself, sitting in a café somewhere while Aziraphale described in luscious detail why exactly she’d purchased them a sexual chew toy with a <i>rope</i> attached.</p><p>“I’ll cook,” she volunteered, sweeping out of the room in the direction of her kitchen. She heard Aziraphale following along after her, making some approving noises as she went.</p><p>The other benefit of cooking their breakfast, aside from sparing Crowley a public-dirty-talk-induced incident of spontaneous demonic combustion, was that cooking gave her a chance to show off a little. Crowley was no chef, and if left to her own devices would subsist entirely on coffee, alcohol, and the occasional hardboiled egg… but that was out of laziness, not a lack of knowledge or skill. All she was planning for the morning was a simple fry up, but it felt good to be able to take a kitchen full of raw ingredients and turn them into something delicious. The tomatoes in particular were very exciting in that regard. They were unseasonably perfect, picked from the bounty of her own indoor garden, and Crowley couldn’t wait for Aziraphale to taste them.</p><p>This was also a chance to be indulgent and do things for her angel, to present her with something special that had been made just for her. It was a chance to tell her without words that Crowley cared about her and her preferences. Crowley knew how Aziraphale liked her eggs prepared and what tea she liked first thing in the morning—delicately poached and strong Earl Grey, respectively. She knew that Aziraphale had a slight preference for sausage over bacon, and that there was a certain kind of marmalade that made the angel’s eyes practically cross whenever she tasted it. Crowley liked to make sure that she always had some on hand these days, as well as a loaf of that nice dark bread from the bakery near the bookshop.</p><p>For her part, Aziraphale watched Crowley cook from a perch on one of the stools at the kitchen island, a small smile on her lips. Crowley kept catching her eye, and would occasionally steal a quick kiss as she passed by.</p><p>The food, when it was all finished, seemed to delight Aziraphale immensely. She had praise for every part of it, and Crowley just sat there and preened. Even when Aziraphale learned about the origins of the tomatoes and asked Crowley to send her compliments to the plants. The menace.</p><p>It had just felt good, doing something for Aziraphale that the angel had obviously really enjoyed. The list of the day’s theoretical date activities shifted and shuffled inside Crowley’s mind, making room up at the top for ideas that would allow for the maximum amount of potential wooing and indulgence possible.</p><p>Midway through the meal, as promised, Aziraphale presented her idea. As expected, Crowley froze in place with a hunk of tomato speared on her fork en route to her mouth, set down her cutlery, and gave the conversation her full attention.</p><p>“I’m suggesting we try a little resistance,” was how Aziraphale first described it, dabbing at her lips with her serviette. “Only a little, though, to start. Your lower jaws are really quite strong, I know. But then again, so am I.”</p><p>It wasn’t a bad idea, really. In fact, it was a great idea. Crowley was fully onboard after hearing just that initial pitch, and might have crawled across the table to make with the snogging and the undressing if it weren’t for the determined way Aziraphale kept sipping at her tea while she talked. So, instead, Crowley folded her hands in her lap and waited, eyes flicking over to the toy where it rested between them on the countertop.</p><p>Crowley had a few suggestions of her own, all of which Aziraphale was willing to incorporate and some of which left her grinning into her tea.</p><p>“We’ll need a way to make sure you can get out of it if it turns out you don’t like it,” Aziraphale said, nudging the loop of rope at the end of the toy.</p><p>To that, Crowley shrugged. Honestly, the idea of her not enjoying every part of this seemed laughable, but Aziraphale was right. Or, at the very least, it would make Aziraphale feel better if there was a plan in place.</p><p>“My cunt’s not going to let go once it bites down, and my bedframe is solid steel,” she said. “Not saying you couldn’t break it with your freakish angel strength, but… the easiest thing might be to just vanish the rope.”</p><p>“You can, you know. At any time,” Aziraphale said, looking at her seriously. “For any reason. Or ask me to.”</p><p>Crowley smiled. “I know, angel. Marmalade?”</p><p>“Yes, please. And… oh, you have the good kind!” Aziraphale cooed over the jar for a moment before spreading herself a generous measure over her toast. “Is that the plan, then? If you decide you don’t like it, then one of us will just miracle the rope away?”</p><p>“Sounds perfect.” Crowley paused, savoring the quiet happiness of the moment. If she could go back into the past, even only just a year or so ago, to tell herself that they’d get this in their future, homemade breakfast and sex talk while seated at Crowley’s kitchen island… the Crowley of the past would have found it both unlikely and surreal.</p><p>“Good,” Aziraphale said, closing her eyes at that first bite of marmalade on toast. “I want you to be safe, whatever it is we do.”</p><p>Now that she realized she was allowed to want it, to <i>have</i> it, Crowley had taken to sex like a starved dog took to food… Actually, scratch that. No dog references. She had taken to it like a starving <i>being,</i> taking whatever she was offered in any configuration, unclear about what she would like best but thrilled to be able to try any of it at all. Gorging herself on the richest parts of whatever was on offer. She might have made herself sick, but Aziraphale was careful with her, making sure she never pushed herself past her limits, even if neither of them had fully plotted out yet where all of those limits <i>were.</i></p><p>No vaginal penetration, that was an easy one to remember. Pushing anything in there felt terribly uncomfortable, so they stuck to external stimulation only. There also always needed to be something in place to keep Crowley’s lower jaws from biting Aziraphale—hence their repeated purchase of a certain type of durable rubber chew toys. That one was definitely one of Crowley’s rules and not something Aziraphale had come up with. Even though Aziraphale often reminded her that she wouldn’t mind it if she got bitten by Crowley’s rather chompy twat, Crowley needed an assurance that she wouldn’t be hurt.</p><p>Beyond those two things, Crowley didn’t really have any solid idea of what things she wanted and what she didn’t. The good thing about being immortal, though, is that they had quite a lot of time to figure it out.</p><p>“Right,” Aziraphale finally said, setting her cutlery down and turning towards the demon vibrating with anticipation on a stool eighteen inches to her left. Crowley was on her feet before she was finished talking. “If you ever want to try it…”</p><p>“You should pick up the toy,” Crowley said, a wolfish grin on her face.</p><p>“Pick it up?” Aziraphale repeated, even as she picked up the rope.</p><p>“Yes. I want to pick <i>you</i> up, and I’d hate for us to forget it in the kitchen.”</p><p>“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, laughing, “Your bedroom is just a few feet away. That’s not necessary.”</p><p>“Do you not want to be picked up?”</p><p>“I never said that, just that it seems a bit… silly.”</p><p>“Sillier than everything else we’ve gotten up to?” Crowley held out a hand. “Silly’s fine. We get to be silly now.”</p><p>Aziraphale seemed to consider it, then took the hand she was offered and stood up off of her stool. “I suppose you’re right.”</p><p>Crowley lifted her angel off her feet, one arm behind her back and another under her knees. She might not be as supernaturally strong as Aziraphale was, but while she was inhabiting her humanoid corporation the angel was no heavier than a human, and so Crowley had no problems at all lifting her to chest height and spinning them around in place.</p><p>“I’ll never get tired of hearing you say that, by the way,” she said once they’d slowed. <i>“I’m right.</i> Say it all you like. Inflate my head to twice its present size.”</p><p>The angel propped her chin up on Crowley’s shoulder and giggled. “Keep having good ideas, and I just might.”</p><p>True to Aziraphale’s word, Crowley’s bedroom really was only a short walk away. In true Aziraphale fashion, though, she worked fast on that short trip and not only removed her own bowtie but also got half of Crowley’s shirt buttons undone. As she slipped each one loose, the angel pressed a kiss against the bit of skin she revealed behind it. She’d covered both of Crowley’s collarbones, most of her throat, and part of her sternum by the time Crowley flopped down on the mattress and brought Aziraphale, shrieking and laughing, down with her.</p><p>The remainder of their clothes were shed quickly, too, though Crowley hung on to her own knickers a bit longer than the rest of it. They were upside down in the bed and all the way down by the footboard, Crowley tugged half up on top of Aziraphale’s naked body, when she felt the first stirrings inside her own cunt.</p><p>“‘Ziraphale,” she murmured, arching into that searing line of open-mouthed kisses Aziraphale was working into the side of her neck.</p><p>“Mmm,” came the answer, muffled as Aziraphale bit down on the place where her neck met her shoulder. Maybe it would leave a mark, maybe it wouldn’t. Crowley found that, in the moment, she didn’t quite care either way.</p><p>“Angel, I’m…” Crowley began. Six weeks of this, and she still hadn’t found a sexy way to explain that she was starting to get aroused enough that her vagina was about to start trying to bite things. Thankfully, Aziraphale seemed to understand anyway.</p><p>“Are you wet for me, my love?” Aziraphale purred in her ear, and <i>fuck.</i> If she hadn’t been already, that would have done it. Squeezing her thighs together almost on reflex, Crowley buried her face in the side of the angel’s neck and nodded. “Lie back for me, love. Let me feel.”</p><p>Aziraphale rolled them over until they were lying the other way around, with Crowley on her back and her head oriented towards the headboard. Her soft hands found the one barrier still between them, fingers slipping up under the edge of Crowley’s knickers and searching out her clit to give it a few teasing rubs. Crowley bit her lip and arched up into her touch.</p><p>“You weren’t kidding,” the angel said, pulling her glistening fingers back and sucking them clean.</p><p>“Fuck,” was all Crowley could say in return.</p><p>“Are you ready for these to come off?” Aziraphale asked her, plucking at the elastic of her knickers.</p><p>Crowley nodded and shimmied as best she could to help as the angel pulled them down and over her long, bony legs. Tossed them over the edge of the bed, ran her hands up and down Crowley’s bare thighs. She slid one up higher, cupping one of Crowley’s breasts and rolling a nipple between her fingers.</p><p>It was imminent, now, the appearance of her lower jaws. Crowley could feel them twitching and stretching inside her, preparing to lash out and bite. She made the choice to part her legs, keeping her eyes locked on Aziraphale’s flushed and smiling face.</p><p>Aziraphale was right there with the toy when she did, pressing it gently but firmly against Crowley’s cunt. She rocked it against her body as she pinched and tugged at Crowley’s nipples, just like she knew the demon loved, working her into a higher state of arousal to lure the teeth out into the open.</p><p>There was that familiar jerking snap, the feeling of something quickly forcing its way out of her body. She was wet enough that it slid out easily, but Crowley still gasped in surprise.</p><p>“There you go, love,” Aziraphale murmured as Crowley’s lower jaws clamped tight around the toy. This new one was made of a slightly softer material than their usual, though still durable and bouncy, which meant the teeth sunk deeper than usual each time they pushed in. Fuck, she was probably going to die from this, wasn’t she? Crowley watched, mouth slightly ajar, as Aziraphale picked up the thick rope that was threaded through the toy and closed it in her fist.</p><p>“I truly have no dignity left, then?” Crowley mumbled, fully aware that she was blushing furiously all the way down to her nipples and very noticeably wet, and that Aziraphale could see both of those things quite clearly from her current position. “You’re going to play tug of war with my cunt. That’s a thing that’s really—really about to happen to me, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Mmm,” Aziraphale hummed, giving a serene little smile as she stroked one of Crowley’s lower jaws with a fingertip. “That’s one of the things, yes. Let me know when you’re ready for me to come up, but I do want to play with you like this for just a little while.”</p><p>Crowley had more words that she’d been planning to say, sarcastic and pithy words that would tell her girlfriend—<i>partner, lover, all the words, holy shit</i>—exactly how embarrassing it could be for a six-thousand-year-old demon to keep getting gifted sex toys that came from Pets Corner instead of LoveHoney. Then, the bastard angel in her bed began to <i>tug,</i> and fuck, <i>fuck,</i> yes, she was definitely going to discorporate.</p><p>“Does it feel good, love?” Aziraphale asked her, voice low and sweet and filthy. Crowley nodded helplessly.</p><p>She was pulling back against the strength of Crowley’s lower jaws in a slow, steady rhythm. Most of the time she let them have it, biting and squeezing as much as they liked, but every few seconds Aziraphale would exert just a tiny, <i>tiny</i> fraction of the strength Crowley knew the principality possessed and make them work to keep their hold.</p><p>There was something wonderfully thrilling about the idea that Aziraphale could rip it clean away if she wanted to, leave Crowley’s jaws empty and wanting and snapping around nothing. Even more arousing was the knowledge that she wouldn’t. Each time she pulled, Crowley’s hips bucked right along with it and soon she found herself panting, as much from exertion as from arousal. She wanted—she wanted more. More sensation, more Aziraphale. <i>More.</i></p><p>“Angel,” she hissed between her teeth, writhing under Aziraphale’s hands-off ministrations. “I want you. Please, please come closer.”</p><p>The angel leaned down and pressed a kiss to Crowley’s forehead. Crowley longed to wrap Aziraphale up in her arms and keep her there, but no. There was one more step here, wasn’t there? And this next one had been her own idea.</p><p>“Come with me, love,” Aziraphale murmured, and Crowley shifted her hips lower and lower on the bed to follow where Aziraphale was leading her. She helped support Crowley’s hips as she lifted them higher and higher until the loop of rope from the toy could slip over the post on the corner of the footboard. “Stay right there for me.”</p><p>Crowley let out a breathy laugh. Of course she’d stay right here. Where else would she go? She was on a very short leash here, somewhat literally speaking. The bedpost provided the resistance that Aziraphale’s hands had moments before, tugging back against her lower jaws with every move they made. She couldn’t even fully lay down without pulling against it.</p><p>Besides, why would she <i>want</i> to go? She had a naked angel slipping around the other side of the bed to come sit on her face. Crowley was in fucking paradise, here.</p><p>“Hips up,” Aziraphale instructed on her way back around, tapping Crowley gently on the side of one of her thighs. Crowley obeyed and the angel slipped a pillow underneath her bum. “How’s that?”</p><p>“Perfect,” Crowley answered, huffing out a laugh. Aziraphale must have noticed the way Crowley had been holding her body taut to put some slack in the rope. She hadn’t even said anything about it out loud, but the angel fixed it anyway. “I love you,” she added, because she could say that now, and she wanted to always be saying it.</p><p>“I love you, too, darling,” Aziraphale said, and kissed her. She sat down on the edge of the bed beside Crowley’s face, and the slight dip in the mattress set Crowley’s heart to racing. “Ready?”</p><p><i>“Yesssss,”</i> she hissed.</p><p>She saw Aziraphale swing her leg over, and for the briefest moment, she was gazing up at the most beautiful Effort ever sculpted anywhere on this planet. Ever sculpted <i>anywhere.</i> That thatch of golden, curly hair. Thick, soft labia just absolutely <i>dripping</i> slick. A fat little clit, shiny and swollen and tantalizing.</p><p>
  <i>Eat your fucking heart out, Georgia O’Keeffe.</i>
</p><p>Then she was being pressed down into the mattress, lips to wet lips, with a pair of strong thighs bracketing her ribs. She couldn’t see anything but angel bum, and Crowley found that she was completely, one hundred percent thrilled with this development. She shimmied her shoulders, bringing her hands up around Aziraphale’s legs to grab two generous handfuls, and squeezed.</p><p>A string of quick little kisses pressed against Crowley’s mons—and the accompanying heat of Aziraphale’s breath against her own sensitive Effort—reminded Crowley of exactly where the rest of her angel had ended up in all of this rearranging. She swallowed down her own residual nerves, still present even after <i>weeks</i> of doing this with no problems or injuries at all.</p><p><i>This is fine,</i> she promised herself. <i>We get to do this now. She’s happy and safe and fine with it.</i></p><p>Aziraphale, thank Someone, didn’t leave her with much time to fret. Crowley’s lower jaws were still locked around the toy, biting and squeezing, tugging fruitlessly against the rope. It was a heady cycle of sensation, a delicious push and pull that had her fighting against the resistance of the bedframe at one extreme and feeling the pressure of the toy against the outside of her cunt at the other. That on its own might have been enough to make her come in time. Then, Aziraphale put those strong, soft hands on her thighs and oh so gently encouraged her to spread her legs even further. Brushed back her pubic hair, gently pulled her labia to the sides and held her open. Fuck, but Crowley was already so wet. She could feel her slick sliding beneath Aziraphale’s fingers, feel it being pushed out of her by the frantic pulsing of her own jaws.</p><p>For a long moment, nothing else happened. Aziraphale was taking her time, evidently pausing just to… to <i>look</i> at her. A few weeks ago, being stared at like that during sex (especially if Crowley couldn’t see Aziraphale’s expression while she did it) would have been enough to send her spiraling. As it was, it did prickle a bit in her stomach, but Crowley rallied. They’d talked about this. She knew how Aziraphale felt about her Effort, teeth and all. She knew, too, that all she’d need to do would be to say the word and Aziraphale would do everything in her not insignificant power to make Crowley comfortable again. That thought was, in and of itself, a strange and unfamiliar one, but one that Crowley’s rational mind knew to be true.</p><p>Crowley gave her lover’s frankly infuriatingly attractive bottom another squeeze, and that was all it took to nudge her angel into action. That long moment ended—though Crowley did realize it probably would not have felt that long at all if she’d thought to time it in heartbeats or tugs of her jaws against the rope instead of the lightspeed pace of her own worries. The first hot swipe of Aziraphale’s tongue broke through that burgeoning anxiety like the fragile thing it was, searing away her worries like that old flaming sword through a snowbank.</p><p>Her tongue was already forking inside her mouth, stretching and splitting, eager to taste the angel lying wet and ready against her lips. Crowley opened her mouth and licked everything in reach, one long pass from the rim of Aziraphale’s cunt down to her clit. The taste of her slick bloomed bright and sour and <i>wonderful</i> against Crowley’s tongue and she gave into the urge to lick her again, faster this time and stopping just short of her clit just to tease. In retaliation, Aziraphale took Crowley’s own clit between her lips and began to suckle, keeping with the rhythm set by Crowley’s jaws around the toy. It was deliriously good, and Crowley closed her eyes and got to work.</p><p>With her tongue focused on her angel’s clit, the forks flicking and squeezing and lavishing her with their attentions, Crowley brought two fingers to the entrance of Aziraphale’s cunt. She didn’t slip them in just yet, just rubbed them there on the outside. Slow, firm circles to contrast with the quicker motions of her tongue. Aziraphale moaned and panted, muffled as it was by her own busy tongue, and Crowley felt the angel’s sweet little cunt squeeze around nothing against the pad of her fingertips. Felt her push back against the touch with her hips. Crowley was happy to oblige, tilting her wrist so Aziraphale could fuck herself down onto Crowley’s fingers at whatever speed she liked. She let out a hoarse groan at the sensation of sliding inside that hot, wet muscle, at the feeling of Aziraphale squeezing down around her.</p><p>It was hard to focus on building her own rhythm, so Crowley just copied the one Aziraphale was using. She rubbed her fingertips against Aziraphale’s inner walls, occasionally spreading them out into a vee to gently stretch her open around them. Slick dripped down her wrist and onto her face, hot and wet and beautifully filthy. Every so often, Crowley would move her fingers in just the right way and Aziraphale would press her thighs together against Crowley’s sides. She’d moan, and Crowley would feel the vibrations of it right against her own clit in the world’s best feedback loop.</p><p>While she was busy melting Crowley’s brain with her tongue, Aziraphale’s hands were roaming around, erratic and lingering, as if they were trying to touch every part of Crowley’s body at once. They would squeeze her inner thighs, then slide down to pet the soft fuzz on her labia and pull them apart again. Gently trace the hard, sensitive ridges of her lower jaws where they were worrying away at the toy, then tap against the rubber with her fingertips with just enough force that Crowley could feel each tap deep inside her cunt. Her fingers would slide all the way back to play in the spit and slick dribbling down Crowley’s perineum, then run circles around her entrance itself. They never penetrated her, never even made Crowley worry that they might, just pressed against the stretched rim of her cunt like Aziraphale was enjoying feeling Crowley fuck herself with her own jaws.</p><p>Unlike Crowley, Aziraphale was an angel who loved to be fingered. Penetrated in general, really, in a number of exciting ways. Crowley had fond memories of the first time she’d worn a strap-on for her, a garish thing in brilliant scarlet that was wide enough to leave her stretched and stuffed full and begging to be fucked <i>harder, Crowley, harder.</i></p><p>Aziraphale also, they had discovered, liked being penetrated by Crowley’s tongue. Upon first hearing about Aziraphale’s curiosity in that regard, Crowley had originally raised an eyebrow. After all, when it got long like this it was really dreadfully slimy and wriggly, and it seemed like it would be rather like being shagged by an octopus… though the Internet had taught her well enough that there were many people out there who saw that as anything but a negative.</p><p>Crowley brought her forked tongue to the entrance of Aziraphale’s cunt, quickly moving her other hand between their bodies to continue touching the angel’s spit slick clit. She gave a few testing licks and prepared to draw out her fingers, but Aziraphale paused her own relentless clitsucking efforts to beg her not to.</p><p>“Both,” she panted, breath hot between Crowley’s legs. “Don’t—please. Fingers and tongue. Please.”</p><p>Wary of stretching Aziraphale’s body open to the point of pain, Crowley did as she was bid, but slowly. She wiggled just the tips in first, feeling them press into that tight space against the back of her own knuckles. The taste of angel was overwhelming in the best way, sharp and sweaty, and it went straight to her head. When the shimmying of Aziraphale’s hips seemed to grow impatient, she pressed in deeper… and deeper still. Her tongue was flexible and strong and so she could fit rather a lot of it up in there. Crowley rubbed the angel faster and harder with her fingers, giving her two points of concentrated sensation as a counterpoint to the heavy, broad slithering of her tongue.</p><p>Aziraphale never was one to come quietly, but there were times she made a beautiful mess with it, too. That had been another discovery they’d made about Aziraphale in the past few weeks, that she was a squirter. Not every time, no. It had only happened twice so far, both times after she’d had something fucking her cunt and something else rubbing her clit at the same time, and both times had been immensely satisfying surprises.</p><p>It was less surprising this time, given how wet Crowley’s face already was from the combination of this vigorous tonguefucking and gravity. Aziraphale’s breathing quickened first, then became something almost like a wail as her muscles seized up. Her thighs pressed in tight as her back arched and her walls squeezed down around Crowley’s tongue and fingers in patternless ecstasy. As pulses of hot, wet slick pushed their way out of her clenching body, they drenched Crowley nearly down to her collarbones.</p><p>When Aziraphale had recovered enough to move, she pushed up and off Crowley’s body. She didn’t go far at all, just repositioned herself so she could lie beside her demon and look at her face-to-face. Crowley smiled up at her, smug even in her heightened state of arousal, until Aziraphale kissed it off her lips. Her tongue was still forked, but shorter now, and Crowley could taste herself on Aziraphale’s tongue as the angel lapped into her mouth.</p><p>One of the angel’s hand slid up the side of Crowley’s face, smearing slick into her hair as Aziraphale stroked and caressed her. The other hand found its way back between Crowley’s legs, working her clit over with a finger on either side in a feverish pace. It was fast enough that Crowley’s lower jaws couldn’t keep up, tugging and squeezing at the toy in a broken rhythm until they couldn’t do anything but bite and pull and <i>bite</i> and <i>pull,</i> her cunt itself clenching around the bulk of their muscle all the way down to the root.</p><p>They didn’t let go of the toy for a long time after that, even after Crowley’s own breathing had slowed and leveled off and the last of her afterglow had faded. For a bit, she worried that they might have gotten stuck in the softer rubber, but she didn’t let herself panic about it. She had Aziraphale next to her, petting the hair back from Crowley’s face and looking at her with so much obvious joy in her smile that she might as well have been glowing. Then, gradually, her lower jaws relaxed. Released the toy, slid out of the rubber with a wet <i>tchtk.</i> Crept back to lurk inside her body until the next time she got a bit randy.</p><p>“How do you feel?” Aziraphale asked her.</p><p>Crowley stretched out, testing her muscles for any lingering pain. There was a bit of ache in her jaw and at the spot where her tongue connected to the inside of her mouth. A little bit of tension in her lower belly and thighs from keeping her hips raised. Nothing that <i>hurt,</i> though. Just the good kind of post-fuck soreness, the kind of thing she’d want to let herself feel instead of healing away.</p><p>“Deliriously happy,” she answered. “And also, happily soggy.”</p><p>“You are <i>very good</i> at that,” Aziraphale retorted, grinning and unapologetic. “Do you want to get cleaned up and have us a bit of a snuggle?”</p><p>She nodded, eyelids half-closed, and waved a lazy hand around. All the extraneous fluids—including the big wet spot on the duvet—vanished. Crowley’s hair also found itself dry and perfectly styled again. The toy was cleaned and relocated to one of her dresser drawers. Aziraphale wrapped her up in a hug and pulled them both up to the head of the bed to crawl up under the blankets.</p><p>Everything was completely, blissfully perfect for about five minutes. Then, as usual, Crowley started feeling too exposed. She was fully covered by a set of sheets and a thick duvet, no one could <i>see</i> her, but she still felt too bare. Too naked. It felt almost like a prickling on her skin, or an itchiness, and it made her want to curl up into a ball and hide.</p><p>Aziraphale’s cream woolen jumper was still draped over the headboard. Murmuring something about being cold, Crowley dragged it back under the blankets.</p><p>She had a sudden, strange image of what her hand might look like from an outside perspective. Wiry and sharp but not quite clawed, reaching out of the darkness like the final scare in one of those campy horror films. The monster is thought to be dead… until a single hand bursts up and out of the earth to grasp for its prey! The audience is shocked into one last cheap scream before the credits roll. Afterwards, everyone goes home happy, even the monster. The monster gets to pull off his rubber mask at the end of the day and go home to someone who loves him. He’s as much a person as anyone else, after all. No less a person for the role he’s had to play.</p><p>Crowley pulled the jumper over her head, forced her hands through the sleeves. It was roomy enough that she could tuck her knees up against her ribs without worrying about stretching it, so she curled up inside it as best she could. She scooted closer to the angel in her bed, rested her head against Aziraphale’s breasts and snaked her arms around her lover’s wonderfully plush, naked waist. Closed her eyes. Breathed as deep and slow as she could.</p><p>“If you’re cold, love,” Aziraphale said to her, nuzzling the top of Crowley’s head, “we can make it warmer in here.”</p><p>“More fun stealing your clothes,” Crowley answered, burrowing deeper into the angel’s embrace. Finally, she felt herself sinking into something like calm again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><b>Why I Tagged This “Bondage:”</b> Crowley’s vagina dentata bites down on everything it is handed and does not let go until after she orgasms, so when Aziraphale hands it <a href="https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/746927690224894032/790456426949771274/EK2201-20200409064013-20200409064108-1000x1000.png">a chew toy with a rope,</a> that rope can then be looped over the footboard to become a point of restraint &amp; source of resistance for her jaws to tug against. AKA, they’re playing sexy tug of war with her bitey bits.<br/></p>
<hr/>
<p>That specific toy is called the “KONG Dental with Rope Extreme” (because of course it is). Just pretend the rope is a closed loop and we’re all good. I’m not going to link directly to the website here because in spite of my joke tags about wanting KONG to sponsor me, I don’t actually want that <i>at all</i> and if they ever found out I was writing lesbian demon vagina dentata porn featuring their products as DIY sex toys, what I’d probably get from them would be a frantic cease-and-desist letter. I will quote part of the product blurb here, though, because reading it made me cry laugh:</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <i>The KONG Dental with Rope Extreme rubber dog toy features patented Denta-Ridges™ and is designed to reward appropriate chewing while supporting a dog's instinctual needs… [and] massaging teeth and gum. The unique Denta-Ridges can be filled with peanut butter or KONG Easy Treat to keep the engagement high.</i>
  </p>
</blockquote>We’re all about rewarding appropriate chewing and supporting instinctual needs here, and hey. Everyone loves a massage. Aziraphale’s “no peanut butter” promise still stands, though.<p>If you’ve never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or you just want to see the scene again, beware ye <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnOdAT6H94s&amp;bpctr=1608358021">the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog</a>. (CW some not terribly realistic 1970s blood and gore effects.)<br/></p>
<hr/>
<p>This was supposed to be a one shot, I swear. It was also supposed to have the “PWP” tag, but then it grew a small plot and about 8k over what I consider to be the maximum PWP length for my own works.<br/>Chapter two is <i>very</i> close to being done. Expect it to go up sometime this weekend. There will also be a preview of it going up tomorrow on my Tumblr for WIP Wednesday.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. oh, when you love her.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Aziraphale’s expression brightened in a way that was almost alarming. “Would you like a hot bath?”</p>
<p>“… I mean, sure.” Crowley paused, running through her mental blueprints of the bookshop. “I guess I just never realized you actually had a bathroom.”</p>
<p>“Well, yes. What did you think that second door up in the bedroom led to?”</p>
<p>“Walk-in wardrobe, maybe?” Crowley said, shrugging. “Sex dungeon full of fuzzy handcuffs and toys built for the discerning rottweiler?”</p>
<p>“It is a <i>bathroom,”</i> Aziraphale sniffed, though Crowley could see the amusement written in the lines around her eyes. “There is no sex dungeon in this shop.”</p>
<p>“Yet.”<br/></p>
<hr/>
<p>Featuring a date, an emotionally fraught bubble bath, and the discovery that Aziraphale isn’t the only being in this relationship who thinks inhuman physiology is a huge turn on.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Content Notes:</b> Some angst crept in, y’all. Crowley has a lot of anxiety happening, some of it having to do with not knowing how to respond to nonsexual intimacy and touch, some to do with discomfort being seen naked, and some of it having to do with lingering fears of unworthiness.</p>
<p>The “sexy degloving” tag comes into play in this chapter… as does, I think, the “the line between body horror and xeno can be a thin one” and “mild body horror” tags (if they didn’t apply to this fic from the beginning by virtue of it being vagina dentata porn). Also, the new tentacle-y tags I had to add come into play here, too.<br/>…A lot happens in this chapter, okay?<br/>The tag "Sexy Degloving" will be explained at the very top of the end note, should you need to read that before you proceed. I will tell you that yes, it is somewhat cursed, and no, no one gets injured. I'll say that again: <b>no injuries occur in this fic.</b> Everyone is safe.</p>
<p>Also, there’s only so many times you can describe an angelic true form as having “tendrils” before you realize you really should tag for tentacles. So, I have amended that in the tag list.<br/>The tendrils come out to play during sexy time. The idea of them being used for penetration does come up, but Crowley doesn’t like penetration, and thus they do not penetrate her. <i>Voilà,</i> we now have our “Non-Penetrative Tentacle Sex” tag. It’s not an officially recognized Ao3 tag yet, but it will be. I’m going to make sure that fucking happens, okay? It’s my goal now.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was lunchtime before they got up again. Crowley reluctantly returned Aziraphale’s jumper and got dressed in her own clothes. She’d be happy to lounge about the rest of the day, absorbing angelic body heat and indulging in a bit of well-earned sloth, but she had work to do. The whole reason Aziraphale had come by at all today was that Crowley had suggested going out on a date, and while everything that had happened this morning had been wonderful, the fact remained that they had yet to leave the flat at all—a prerequisite, most would argue, for having a date out in public.</p>
<p>As little as either of them <i>actually</i> cared for the opinions of the humans (or any watchers from their former offices), there was still a sort of barely scabbed-over rawness to the thought that they could walk around in the world now as a couple and it would be… fine. It would be safe. No one could stop them from calling each other <i>“my partner”</i> in a restaurant, or sharing a quick kiss before parting for the night on the steps of the bookshop. They could hold hands in a bloody Tesco if they wanted. What a fucking weird, beautiful world this was.</p>
<p><i>Thanks, Adam.</i> They really ought to send the kid a Christmas card, at the very least.</p>
<p>Crowley’s plan for today’s date was, essentially, to unleash the angel upon the unsuspecting holiday markets of London. While Aziraphale’s primary habitat consisted of musty old bookshops and fine dining establishments, <i>Angelus principatum</i> of the Eastern Gate subspecies could also thrive in musty old antique shops and in proximity to street food vendors and kitschy arts-and-crafts stalls. So, after plying her with sushi and hot sake, Crowley took Aziraphale across the river and released her into the Southbank Centre Winter Market to putter around looking at things to her heart’s content. Crowley herself had several important jobs during this process. Namely, to follow around after Aziraphale looking smitten, to keep the angel’s hot cocoa topped off, and to carry the shopping bags she accumulated over the course of the afternoon.</p>
<p>It was an enjoyable date, for the most part. Aziraphale liked humans when they weren’t trying to buy her books, and Crowley liked watching Aziraphale people-watch. Being December, it <i>was</i> a bit chilly out, and Crowley’s clothes <i>had</i> been chosen for style rather than warmth… but between her own cup of cocoa, the pair of gloves Aziraphale foisted upon her, and the angel’s own hand holding hers, Crowley wasn’t <i>freezing.</i></p>
<p>Until, of course, it started raining on their walk back. It was one of those miserable winter rainstorms, heavy and near-Arctic but without even the decency to become snow, and it soaked Crowley’s ankle boots and jacket within seconds. Aziraphale produced an umbrella from within the depths of that ratty carpet purse she carried, which helped, but Crowley was still wet and uncomfortable and left with squishy socks.</p>
<p>Those were one of the best-performing torments in Hell, wet socks. Crowley had even gotten a commendation for suggesting them to Dagon to incorporate into her torturous repertoire. She could have vanished them, but instead suffered through them for the rest of the walk back. After all, the only thing worse than walking in wet socks was walking in boots with wet feet and <i>no</i> socks. Crowley had kept that bit of information to herself, though, instead of telling Hell and going for a second commendation. The poor humans Down there had suffered enough, she thought.</p>
<p>They had been on their way back to her Mayfair flat, but Aziraphale made the wise suggestion that perhaps they change directions and head to the somewhat closer Soho bookshop instead. Crowley agreed and took the excuse to press closer to the angel under the umbrella.</p>
<p>Back at the shop, Crowley stripped out of her shoes, socks, and outer layers the moment the door had closed behind her. Aziraphale hung her wet things up to dry and returned with a tea towel from the back room to give Crowley’s short-cropped hair a bit of a fluff-up. Even without looking at a mirror, Crowley could tell that the rain had done a number on her carefully re-spiked hairstyle. She’d been considering burning another minor miracle to fix it for the second time today, but then Aziraphale started touching her again and her train of thought ground to a screeching halt.</p>
<p>“You’re trembling, dear,” the angel observed, rubbing Crowley’s ears with the towel. They were standing awfully close together, close enough that even in the dim light of the shop’s entryway Crowley could see the way the raindrops were clinging to Aziraphale’s short blonde curls.</p>
<p>“And you’re not,” Crowley observed in turn. “Your hands are warm, and you weren’t even wearing gloves.”</p>
<p>“Well, I was walking on the inside when it started, so the awning I was under spared me the worst of it.” Aziraphale picked up Crowley’s hands and sighed. “And I do tend to run a bit hotter than you do. Your hands are like ice, love. We should get you warmed up.”</p>
<p>Crowley quirked an eyebrow. “Any ideas?”</p>
<p>Aziraphale’s expression brightened in a way that was almost alarming. “Would you like a hot bath?”</p>
<p>“… I mean, sure.” She paused, running through her mental blueprints of the bookshop. “I guess I just never realized you actually had a bathroom.”</p>
<p>“Well, yes. What did you think that second door up in the bedroom led to?”</p>
<p>“Walk-in wardrobe, maybe?” Crowley said, shrugging. “Sex dungeon full of fuzzy handcuffs and toys built for the discerning rottweiler?”</p>
<p>“It is a <i>bathroom,”</i> Aziraphale sniffed, though Crowley could see the amusement written in the lines around her eyes. “There is no sex dungeon in this shop.”</p>
<p>“Yet.”</p>
<p>“I suppose there is always room for renovations. So, my darling, will you allow me to whisk you away to an evening of pampering and relaxation, my dearest?”</p>
<p>Something twinged in Crowley’s chest. “You really don’t have to go to the trouble.”</p>
<p>“Ah, but I’d like to.”</p>
<p>Twin desires warred inside her, but eventually Crowley’s ever-present longing to give Aziraphale anything she wanted won out over her irrational urge to shrink away from any reciprocal kindness. “Yeah, let’s. Sounds fun.”</p>
<p>“Are you finished with your sunglasses for the moment, love?”</p>
<p>Crowley took them off and tucked one of the arms into the collar of her shirt. “Guess so. Why?”</p>
<p>“Because,” Aziraphale said, bastard grin spreading across her face as she rested the damp towel over her shoulder, “I’d like to carry you up and I wanted to make sure you were comfortable, first.”</p>
<p>“It’s just upstairs, isn’t it?” Crowley asked, feeling somehow flighty.</p>
<p>“I won’t do it if you don’t want me to, but if you’re hesitating because you’re feeling a bit silly about it, I’d like to remind you of something you told me this morning.” Aziraphale said, spreading her arms in invitation. Fuck, but she did look incredibly cuddly in that jumper. “We get to be silly now, if we want to be.”</p>
<p>“Not that it ever stopped us before,” Crowley mumbled, giving in and leaning forward to let herself get picked up.</p>
<p>Aziraphale was every bit as cuddly as she’d hoped, holding Crowley securely to her chest in those strong, wool-encased arms of hers as she took them both up the spiral staircase to the upstairs flat. It was a comfortable ride up, and Crowley had no fear of being dropped… So why, then, was her heart beating so fast?</p>
<p>The angel set her back down on her own two feet inside the bedroom so she could shed a few layers of her own. The jumper wound up folded on the bed with her bowtie, the socks went in the hamper, and her boots went in their usual spot by the door. She kept her trousers, braces, and shirt, though.</p>
<p>“Are you not going to be getting in with me?” Crowley asked, eying Aziraphale’s open collar.</p>
<p>“Mmmm… perhaps not, at least not today,” Aziraphale said, rolling up her sleeves. “I’d like to focus my attentions on you if that’s alright. Give you a nice long soak, maybe wash your hair if you’d let me.”</p>
<p>“I mean… surely you like baths, too. Could do a bit of, ah. Mutual pampering. Doesn’t have to be just you doing everything for me.”</p>
<p>“Crowley, you’ve spent the entire morning looking after my every whim.” Aziraphale looked a bit sheepish. “And for lot longer than this morning. You always have been so good to me, even before I could even do as much as thank you in return.”</p>
<p>“But I like doing those things!” Crowley protested. “I… mlnegh. I enjoy… being the reason you feel good. I’m getting as much out of it as you are, promise. You never have to feel like you need to pay me back.”</p>
<p>“I don’t. This isn’t a transaction, love.” Aziraphale padded across the threadbare carpet on bare feet and pressed a kiss to Crowley’s cheek. “I want to be the reason you feel good. And you <i>deserve</i> to feel good, too. You do know that, don’t you? You’re every bit as deserving of doting and indulgence and gentleness as me.”</p>
<p>Crowley dropped her face into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck. Fuck, but she was warm… and Crowley was still feeling a bit damp and clammy…</p>
<p>“Fine,” she said, muffled as it was against Aziraphale’s collar.</p>
<p>“Love you,” Aziraphale promised, and kissed her behind the ear.</p>
<p>“Love you,” Crowley answered, looking her in the face again. Maybe someday she would be able to do things like this without feeling squirmy, but that day was not today. Perhaps, though, it was still good to do it anyway.</p>
<p>“Are there any scents you’d like?” Her angel asked her.</p>
<p>“You pick,” she said, then thought about it a moment longer. “Uh. Nothing overpowering, please.”</p>
<p>“Duly noted,” Aziraphale said, nodding, and undid a <i>second</i> button on her shirt.</p>
<p>Crowley distracted herself from the weird lump in her throat by making a joke. A hand thrown up across her eyes, she gasped and said, “You’re practically indecent!”</p>
<p>“You’ll survive,” Aziraphale said, and opened the mysterious second door in the bedroom.</p>
<p>Aziraphale’s bathroom was so quintessentially <i>her</i> that Crowley had to stifle a laugh. There wasn’t any reason why beings such as them would even <i>need</i> a bathroom, and yet, Aziraphale had made sure that the flat above her shop included one that was fully functional. Also, fully hideous.</p>
<p>There was lace <i>everywhere,</i> from the mostly useless curtain covering the little window up near the ceiling to the numerous doilies clinging to the counter beside the sink like a fungal growth. They’d clearly originally been placed underneath Aziraphale’s various potions and bottles… before the angel’s collection had grown beyond the boundaries of common sense and the doilies were outnumbered and rendered pointless. Crowley wondered how often she used this room, anyway. There were beauty products in here that easily could have been more than forty years old, and right next to them, little black plastic pots from Lush. The soaps in the dish next to the sink were all shaped like pastel seashells, chalky and ancient like something out of the boring part of a natural history museum. Wax from drooping candles in a dozen colors dripped in thick trails down the sides of the massive claw foot tub and onto the tile floor. Oh, and of course, the <i>books.</i> Dog-eared paperbacks, most of them, all in piles wherever there was free space.</p>
<p>“It’s a wonder your shop only burned down the once,” Crowley commented, giving her partner a wry smile. “If you showed this place to a building inspector, they’d probably cry. This place is a fire hazard.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale rolled her eyes and shooed Crowley further into the room. “Shush, you silly demon. Here, sit down,” she said, drawing a stool out towards them with her foot. The books that had been perched on it were quickly relocated to another nearby stack. Crowley stuck her tongue out at her, but sat where she was bid.</p>
<p>Once she saw that Crowley was safely tucked out of the way, Aziraphale began bustling around the room like a fussy blonde tornado, clearing off space around the bath itself—including wrenching melted-in-place candles free of the porcelain and tossing the worst of them into the bin. In the end, she’d managed to pare the clutter on the rim of the bath down to a respectable <i>three</i> bottles, each seemingly chosen after a period of intense deliberation.</p>
<p>“Almost done, love,” Aziraphale said, planting a quick kiss to the top of Crowley’s head on her way to the door.</p>
<p>“Take your time,” Crowley answered, leaning back on the stool. As soon as Aziraphale had left for the bedroom, Crowley reached for the closest stack of books and rifled through them looking for the one with the most ridiculous cover art. She was thrilled to discover one featuring a shirtless man in a kilt slathered in so much oil that all she could picture was pushing him down a smooth incline on his belly and watching him <i>go.</i></p>
<p>By the time Aziraphale returned, she’d already flipped to the saucy bits. <i>“Oh, Fitzwilliam,”</i> she read in a brogue thick enough to choke Shadwell, <i>“I know I am but a tender virgin lass, but my body aches to know the heat of your manhood. My bosom heaves with the thought of the touch of your rough, calloused hand on my most special of places…”</i></p>
<p>The angel plucked the book out of her hand and set it back on top of the stack, smirking a wretched little bastard smirk. “No one who’s face I’ve sat on gets to make fun of the books I read in the bath.”</p>
<p>“Right, yeah,” Crowley said, half swallowing her tongue. “S’a fair rule.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale’s arms were laden with goodies from the bedroom… and the kitchen, apparently. After laying a fluffy-looking robe across the top of the radiator to warm, the angel arranged a bottle of chilled white wine and a pair of glasses on the counter beside the sink. From the cabinet below it, she produced some sort of suction cup contraption and a plastic-y looking waterproof neck pillow. She rested the latter on the rim of the bath and stuck the former to the tiled wall close by.</p>
<p>Crowley watched the process with narrowed eyes. “Is that… a suction cup wine glass holder?”</p>
<p>The angel turned and beamed. “It is, yes.”</p>
<p>Something tiny and fragile shifted inside Crowley, looking for a place to hide inside her ribcage. It wanted her to beg Aziraphale to reconsider—not the silly wine glass holder, not the bubble bath. All of it. All of <i>her.</i> To ask the angel to consider the work she was putting in here, versus the paltry reward she’d get in return. It asked Crowley to remind herself that she would be happy with far less, and that maybe it felt safer with less, too. More familiar. If Aziraphale were less affectionate to her, less careful, she had less to fear about someday losing this. About Aziraphale discovering she wasn’t worth it.</p>
<p>She didn’t give in to the fear completely. Crowley merely scowled and said, “You’re running me a bath, not outfitting me for a trip in a space shuttle to Mars.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale delicately ignored Crowley’s dramatics and turned her attentions to the candles. Instead of affixing her chosen few back on the lip of the bath, Aziraphale arranged them all on the floor. With the wave of one hand, the wicks all ignited into cheery little flames. With a second gesture, they rose into the air and hung there, perfectly stationary.</p>
<p>“There,” she said, dusting her hands off on her trousers. “Not a fire hazard anymore.” Sure enough, none of them were anywhere near the doilies or paperbacks or anything even remotely flammable.</p>
<p>Crowley wasn’t really sure why, but that simple act left her throat feeling a bit tight again. She had joked about the fire earlier, sure, but the image of the shop in flames—and Aziraphale <i>gone</i>—still visited her sometimes in her dreams.</p>
<p>It had only happened once on a night when Aziraphale had been sleeping next to her. Crowley hadn’t screamed in terror, or anything. Hadn’t even woken the angel up at all. But Aziraphale had known that something was wrong anyway, that next morning when she awoke to find Crowley already out of bed and dressed and curled up in the chair across the room. Aziraphale had asked her about it, and Crowley had told her. Assured her that she’d <i>known</i> it had only been a nightmare, nothing real. Assured her that she was fine.</p>
<p>Aziraphale had seen past Crowley’s bluster then, just as she’d seen past the jokes now, and she had <i>made</i> it fine.</p>
<p>The pipes rattled in the walls as Aziraphale cranked on the tap. There was a short pause when nothing happened, then the water came gushing out of the ancient plumbing, clear and steaming hot. Aziraphale leaned over the edge of the bath and trailed her fingertips through the water, adjusting the temperature until she considered it perfect. When the tub was about a third full, she uncapped one of the three bottles and poured in a little of the liquid. The light smell of roses filled the room as a veritable cloud of bubbles filled the bath, rising with the water level.</p>
<p>Seemingly satisfied, Aziraphale shut off the tap, stepped to the side, and gestured towards the bath with a proud little grin lighting up her dimpled face.</p>
<p><i>Well,</i> Crowley thought, <i>nothing for it then.</i> No sense in being <i>shy.</i> Not after this morning. Not after the last two weeks.</p>
<p>Staring at that stupid little wine glass holder suction cupped to the wall, Crowley peeled off her clothes and deposited them into Aziraphale’s waiting arms. Thankfully, the angel chose that moment to spirit the laundry away back into the bedroom. This spared Crowley the indignity of having to fold her awkward, naked body into a high-sided antique bathtub full of hot froth while a captive audience looked on. The bubbles were at least fairly opaque.</p>
<p>Crowley was fully submerged by the time Aziraphale got back, lurking beneath the water and feeling quite snakey indeed, even in her humanoid shape. She broke the surface and waved at the angel, feeling some of the bubbles still clinging to her hair.</p>
<p>“Look, angel,” she said, pointing to the coiffure of white foam piled on the top of her head. “I’m you.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad to see you’re enjoying yourself,” Aziraphale said, half-laughing, those lines around her eyes crinkling. She retrieved the stool from across the room and arranged herself a place to sit at the head of the bath, right at Crowley’s side.</p>
<p>“So, tell me angel,” Crowley said, crossing her arms and leaning over the rim of the bath, “I’m in the water, up to my nipples in bubbles. You’ve brought alcohol and mood lighting… what now?”</p>
<p>“You just… do whatever you like. There aren’t rules to this kind of thing.” Aziraphale tilted her head. “Do you ever do this for yourself?”</p>
<p>“What, baths?”</p>
<p>“Yes. Or any sort of pampering, I suppose.”</p>
<p>“Not really, no. At least not quite like this, with all the accessories and things. I had to… you know. There was a certain standard for me. Had to look the part, even when it was just me lounging around the flat.” Crowley laughed. “How would it look if Hastur and Ligur popped over for a check-in and found me in a bubble bath?”</p>
<p>Aziraphale, when Crowley looked over at her again, wasn’t laughing. Her expression had turned rather dark. “Yes, love. I know exactly what you mean.”</p>
<p>Crowley shifted topics quickly, back towards something neutral. The last thing she wanted was for Aziraphale to start feeling sorry for her, especially when she was naked and already somewhat emotionally compromised. She might think that Crowley had been deprived of things, or even worse, she might start trying to make up for them.</p>
<p>“Besides,” she said, casual as anything, as she leaned back against the neck pillow, “I figured that if I—back when I was on my own, I mean, because I like what we’re doing right now—it never really occurred to me to try. Knowing me, if I tried to lie still in hot water up to my neck for an hour, I’d either fall asleep or get terribly bored ten minutes in.”</p>
<p>“That’s usually why I bring a book,” Aziraphale said.</p>
<p>“You always bring a book, no matter where you’re going,” Crowley scoffed, her voice fond. “I do have a shower in my flat, though.”</p>
<p>“Oh?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, one of the glass stall ones. Good for thinking under the water. Good for sore muscles, too. The door also has a really effective seal on it.” She cleared her throat. “Aftermarket, of course. But yeah, I’ve done that a time or two. Filled it up. No candles or bubbles, but I guess that's close.”</p>
<p>“So, you flooded your shower and floated around in it like it was an overlarge aquarium?”</p>
<p>“Once or twice. The first time I was drunk and did it on accident.”</p>
<p>“It sounds... interesting, actually. Like it could be peaceful.” A thought seemed to occur to Aziraphale. “Did you ever try it as a serpent?”</p>
<p>“Floating around in my shower?” Crowley asked. Aziraphale nodded. “No. I thought about it, though.”</p>
<p>“I’d like to see that someday,” she said. “Human form or serpent. It sounds rather... dreamy.”</p>
<p>
  <i>Dreamy?</i>
</p>
<p>“One of the perks of not needing to breathe, I suppose,” Crowley said, flicking the surface of the water.</p>
<p>“Are you ready for me to wash your hair?” Aziraphale asked her, gently touching the back of Crowley’s neck with her thumb.</p>
<p>“Sure,” Crowley said, straightening her shoulders against the wall of the bath.</p>
<p>“Pass me those other two bottles, please?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, ‘course.”</p>
<p>“This is my usual shampoo and conditioner. They’re vanilla. I hope you don’t mind smelling like me,” Aziraphale said, something tentative like an apology in her voice, “But if you do, I can summon something from your flat. Or anywhere else, really.”</p>
<p>Crowley shook her head, the enormity of the idea stealing her words away for a moment. Not just the idea of <i>smelling like Aziraphale,</i> but of Aziraphale choosing to make Crowley <i>smell like herself.</i> It was a concept she’d never considered before, but she realized upon hearing it that she was hungry for it.</p>
<p>“Vanilla’s fine,” she managed. A smooth recovery.</p>
<p>Aziraphale’s hands were firm but gentle on the back of Crowley’s head as she nudged to indicate she should lift it off the neck pillow. Crowley shifted in the water, sitting up and leaning over to better follow that touch. She caught one of the angel’s hands before she could move it away completely, pressing kisses to the inside of her wrist.</p>
<p>“Close your eyes,” Aziraphale instructed, all soft and indulgent. “I’ll need to rinse your hair first. Wash off those bubbles.”</p>
<p>When Crowley obeyed her, she did so with a smirk. With her head bent over like this, Aziraphale shouldn’t be able to see it, but it didn’t matter. The smirk was for Crowley’s own benefit, a reflex she had honed over the millennia. Smirking was defensive—no matter what happened to her, or around her, she felt more in control of the situation if she could smirk her way through it. If she looked like she knew something others didn’t, maybe she could convince herself that she really did.</p>
<p>It was quiet in the bathroom, and with her eyes closed, Crowley found herself with little to focus on besides her own thoughts. She felt Aziraphale lean away to get something behind them, and for that one half-second moment, Crowley had the fleeting, irrational fear that she was alone here in the water. She had closed her eyes to the wax-stained edges of the bath and the rose-scented bubbles floating on the water, the rippling reflections of the candle flame and the angel’s shoulders… all the visual evidence of Aziraphale’s presence, of her care. Crowley’s smirk faltered at the edges. How fragile had she become, then, in just these past few months? She had gotten her first taste of affection—gorged herself on it, really—and was already so frightened of losing it that even a moment without it had her doubting.</p>
<p>The first deluge of water over her head, warm and slow as it poured from Aziraphale’s cupped hands, washed the rest of her smirk away completely. Crowley found herself going very still, biting her lip as Aziraphale wet her hair. Even with her eyes closed, she felt the angel’s presence everywhere. The firm, steady weight of her hand on Crowley’s shoulder. The smells, almost a physical presence on her tongue and in her nose—the faint perfume of rose in the water, the lavender-scented smoke from the candles, and something that was instantly, indescribably recognizable as <i>Aziraphale.</i> The quiet sloshing sound as the angel brought her hands down below the surface of the water to fill them again. The heady rush of warmth that flowed over Crowley’s scalp and neck with each pour.</p>
<p>“Tilt your head back, love,” Aziraphale murmured, her fingers lingering on Crowley’s forehead. Crowley slumped backwards, releasing her knees from the death grip she’d put them in without even noticing. Her head settled heavily past the edge of the bath, the pillow a welcome cushion on her neck.</p>
<p>Why was she so tense? This was supposed to be relaxing. Crowley almost said as much, just to tease her angel, but her throat wasn’t cooperative at the moment. She heard the sound of the shampoo bottle opening, smelled the rich vanilla as Aziraphale lathered it between her palms, and she stayed frozen and silent.</p>
<p>Crowley’s scalp was one of her weak points. She knew it, Aziraphale knew it, she knew Aziraphale knew it. It shouldn’t have been surprising, then, just how strongly having her hair washed would affect her. Somehow, though, Crowley hadn’t been prepared for the sheer sensory impact of feeling those strong, soft hands working the shampoo into her hair. The gentle scratch of those short, smooth fingernails nails. The rolling squeeze of her angel’s fingers. Bubbles sluicing over her shoulders and down over her chest. It was overwhelming—in the best way, yes, but still overwhelming. Not quite relaxing, but like something that might <i>become</i> relaxing if she could let it. The sheer tenderness of the act was almost painful, but in a way that promised to be healing, like heat applied to aching muscles.</p>
<p>“Are you alright? Did I get some in your eye?” Aziraphale asked.</p>
<p>“No,” Crowley said out loud after a pause, once she’d realized she probably shouldn’t shake her head if she wanted Aziraphale to keep going.</p>
<p>“You’re making a face. Your mouth is all scrunched up.”</p>
<p>“M’fine,” she lied. That might have been it, but for the nagging little voice that reminded her that she would do better in the long run with honesty. Reminded her that she hadn’t been punished the last six dozen times she’d said what was on her mind, and that it had actually gotten her a lot of nice things recently, in these incredible months since the world had failed to end. Eyes still shut, she added, “Think I’m a bit more tense than I thought.”</p>
<p>“Do you want to stop?” Aziraphale asked, her hands stilling.</p>
<p>“No. But can I… Mind if I rinse my face?”</p>
<p>“Go ahead. We can rinse your hair, too, if you’d like. Apply the conditioner.”</p>
<p>Crowley nodded, leaned forward until her head was between her knees beneath the surface of the water. She’d never opened her eyes, and she squeezed them even more tightly shut as she brought up her fingers to scrub at her own scalp and rinse away the soap. Aziraphale’s hand rested on the center of her back, warm and heavy and grounding.</p>
<p>She surfaced again when her lungs were burning for air they didn’t really need, and Aziraphale cradled her head as Crowley practically collapsed onto her. She let herself be guided back onto the neck pillow, water streaming over her cheeks and down her throat like the hot tracks of tears. It wasn’t—she wasn’t <i>crying.</i> Of course she wasn’t. This was the happiest she’d ever been in her life. But she did feel a little raw. A little exposed… and not just emotionally.</p>
<p>Crowley used some of her serpentine flexibility to twist her legs around in the bath, one crossed tight over the other and both slightly bent to the side, and found she felt a little better.</p>
<p>“So. Conditioner?” She asked, turning to look over her shoulder at Aziraphale.</p>
<p>“Just a moment,” Aziraphale answered, dipping her hands in the water up to her wrists before running them though Crowley’s hair. Back and forth, slow and firm, she rubbed her fingertips in intoxicating patterns against Crowley’s scalp. “Making sure all the suds are rinsed away…”</p>
<p>Aziraphale could call it whatever she liked, but she wouldn’t be able to fool Crowley. This was a scalp massage, and no excuse could hide that.</p>
<p>“This is blatant spoiling, and you know it,” Crowley grumbled weakly, sighing in spite of herself as those strong hands slid down to knead her neck at the base of her skull.</p>
<p>“I know of no such thing,” Aziraphale countered, really giving the neck rub her all. “This is pampering.”</p>
<p>“What’s the difference?”</p>
<p>“To call it <i>spoiling</i> implies that I shouldn’t be doing this, that you would be made worse for being shown some doting.” She clicked her tongue. “That a simple bit of affection would ruin you.”</p>
<p>Well, Crowley certainly <i>felt</i> ruined as it was, but… perhaps Aziraphale was right.</p>
<p>“Fine,” she sighed. “Do your worst, O Angel of the Bubble Bath. Anoint me with your essential oils, or what have you. Leave me pink and scrubbed and shiny and smelling like a meadow.” Crowley gestured lazily as she spoke, water dripping from her fingertips and landing over the edge of the bath.</p>
<p>“Oh, I fully intend to,” Aziraphale murmured in her ear, the angel’s voice low and dark with promise. Crowley felt gooseflesh prickle on the back of her neck. “I will leave you, my dearest demon, in such a state of relaxation and calm that you will hardly know what to do with yourself.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale’s massaging hands descended lower, to Crowley’s shoulders, where they began to work her muscles over with the self-assuredness of a sculptor. Under her ministrations, Crowley’s eyes slipped closed. Her earlier nerves weren’t <i>gone,</i> but she trusted Aziraphale enough to ignore them. After all, if Aziraphale were a sculptor, Crowley would happily be her clay. She might as well be, as she already felt herself becoming putty beneath her lover’s hands, and the angel had only just begun.</p>
<p>Somehow, amid all the fussing, Aziraphale even managed to lather Crowley’s hair with the conditioner. Crowley was only half aware of it when it happened, of the smell of vanilla and the slippery feeling against her scalp as Aziraphale’s attentions roamed higher for a turn.</p>
<p>The angel dipped her hands in the water to wash them clean, pressed a kiss to Crowley’s wet temple. “Wine, dearest?” She murmured. Crowley nodded and she felt the angel lean away, heard the pop of the cork and the quiet glug of liquid pouring into a glass. Then, Aziraphale was back, leaning against the side of the bath beside her, pushing the stem of one glass into Crowley’s hand.</p>
<p>“Cheers,” Crowley mumbled, smiling, and clinked their glasses together. The first sip was wonderfully cold, a perfect contrast to the heat of the bathwater, and she felt it slide all the way down to her belly.</p>
<p>“How are you feeling?” Aziraphale asked.</p>
<p>She closed her eyes, trying to take stock of everything that was happening. Things were still a little raw, and she still felt a little sensitive… but she <i>was</i> relaxed. Practically jellified, really.</p>
<p>“Better,” Crowley said, and it was the truth.</p>
<p>“Good,” Aziraphale said, trailing her fingertips in the water.</p>
<p>For several minutes, that was all they did. Just sat there next to each other in silence, sipping wine. Breathing. Existing next to each other in the same space. And… it was nice. There was no pressure, no intense emotion, just quiet companionship. If not for the cool wine, Crowley might have gone to sleep.</p>
<p>Eventually, Aziraphale finished with her glass and set it out of the way beside the sink. She offered to take Crowley’s, but instead, Crowley asked for a top off. Really, the wine was doing wonders for her residual nerves.</p>
<p>“Would you like me to bathe you?” Aziraphale asked her, trailing a hand across Crowley’s bare shoulder.</p>
<p>Well, so much for that. Crowley tensed, and Aziraphale felt her tense, and the angel pulled her hand away.</p>
<p>“What’s wrong, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked her, her brows pinched into a worried frown. “You’ve been out of sorts all evening, ever since we got back to the shop.”</p>
<p>“Sorry,” she said.</p>
<p>“No, you have nothing to apologize for,” Aziraphale insisted. “I just… I want to know what’s wrong. I want to be able to help.”</p>
<p>Crowley sighed a long and deflating sort of sigh, sinking a bit lower into the water. “I know. I know you’re just being… well, you.” She saw Aziraphale’s hurt expression and she hurried to explain. “Being… nice, I mean. To me. And I like it! Promise, I like it. But I get up in my head sometimes, and it gets… overwhelming.”</p>
<p>“Could you tell me which parts are overwhelming? I can try not to do those things, then.”</p>
<p>“No, it’s not… it’s not something I want you to stop, necessarily. I’m just not used to this much… well.” She grimaced. “This much.”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”</p>
<p>Crowley took another fortifying sip of her wine, twisted around where she was sat. Pressed her thighs a bit tighter together.</p>
<p>Part of it was the just about the nudity, honestly. Even with the thick bubbles, it still had her on edge. This was the longest she’d ever been naked around another person, even around <i>Aziraphale,</i> aside from the times they’d had sex.</p>
<p>Since that first time they made love, Aziraphale had gotten increasingly more comfortable with casual nudity. When it was just the two of them together, either in Crowley’s flat or here in the bookshop, and they had nowhere to be, Aziraphale would sometimes strip down to barely anything. Sometimes she’d finish her day and take off everything but her trousers and socks, hanging all those layers over the back of a chair—coat and waistcoat, shirt and bowtie, vest and brassiere—and just sit there topless on the sofa. Other times, she’d wake up in the morning and walk around in just her nightgown, not a stich beneath it. It rode up very easily.</p>
<p>Crowley… didn’t. She always slept in pajamas, and might go as far as to take her jacket and shoes off if she was relaxing. Even though they’d broken that barrier, even though Aziraphale had <i>seen</i> her naked, knew all about her, had <i>touched</i> her body… Crowley tended to keep her clothes on if they weren’t actively having sex. Or cuddling in the immediate aftermath thereof. It was just easier. During sex, she was usually very distracted and didn’t have as much time to think about how odd it was to be so very bare. After sex, she was usually so blissed out she didn’t care. Besides, there was almost always a jumper or shirt of Aziraphale’s nearby that she could swipe once her afterglow had faded enough for her anxiety to resurface. And Aziraphale sometimes told her she thought it was <i>cute,</i> seeing Crowley dressed up in her clothes like that. It was a great incentive to keep doing it.</p>
<p>Another part of it was the touching. She’d basically taught herself how to handle being touched sexually by now, for all that it still could feel like a shock that such a thing could happen at all. Before the sex started happening, she’d taught herself how to kiss and snuggle. She was confident she could learn how to be touched like this, too, how to accept these casual, intimate touches without feeling like her touch-starved skin was screaming with the agonizing gentleness of it.</p>
<p>More than anything, though, it was the fact that when Aziraphale got like this, with all of her attentions focused on Crowley and Crowley alone, when she was determined to heap kindness upon kindness on her and show the depth of her love in a million blazing ways… Crowley just wanted to break down and sob. Six thousand years of loneliness reared up in the shadowy parts of her mind, still bruised and bleeding after all this time. This kind of quiet, domestic love was what she’d wanted for as long as she could remember, what she’d learned how to live without. Now that she actually had it, the sheer fucking <i>relief</i> she felt was almost enough to break her.</p>
<p>“I love you,” Crowley said, and <i>fuck,</i> her voice was raw. “I love you so much, angel. S’just a lot sometimes to think we get to have this.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale put her arms around Crowley’s neck and hugged her, not caring that her shirt was getting wet or that the conditioner in Crowley’s hair was probably smearing into hers.</p>
<p>“I know,” her angel whispered, and for Someone’s sake, she sounded a bit strained, too. “I know, I know. I love you too, Crowley.”</p>
<p>She snaked an arm up, slipped the stem of her wine glass into the holder suction-cupped to the wall above the bath. “This was a good idea,” Crowley said, chuckling wetly as she tapped the plastic.</p>
<p>“All my ideas are good ideas. Don’t you know that by now?” Aziraphale murmured back.</p>
<p>Crowley rotated in the bath until she was kneeling, facing her angel straight on. “They are,” she said. “They really are.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale tipped her chin up and kissed her, soft and slow and searching, her hands running up and down Crowley’s wet back in formless patterns. Crowley practically melted into Aziraphale’s arms, her wet hands running through the angel’s short blonde curls again and again, like they couldn’t touch her enough.</p>
<p>“Is this too much? Are you wanting to get out of the bath?” Aziraphale asked against her lips.</p>
<p>She thought about it, thought about the idea of getting out and wrapping her body up in that fuzzy robe warming on the radiator. Maybe laying on Aziraphale’s lap in bed, maybe getting her hair stroked. That sort of thing was easier to take when she wasn’t quite so bloody naked, but having her whole body on display made everything so much more difficult. She wasn’t used to being looked at…</p>
<p>But she wanted to be. She wanted to be looked at, she wanted to be touched. She wanted to come home after a long day and peel her skintight jeans off and walk around in nothing but a long shirt. She wanted to take Aziraphale back to her flat and seal the shower door shut tight behind them so they could float around in there together, dreamy as anything. She wanted to cuddle naked in bed after a shag for a whole afternoon, pressing every inch of her skin to every inch of Aziraphale’s, not a thing between them. Not even Crowley’s anxieties.</p>
<p>“I want to finish the bath,” Crowley said. “And… yeah. I think I would like you to suds me up. If you still want to.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale smiled and kissed her on the nose. “Alright, then,” she said. “Get comfortable. I’m going to take my shirt off.”</p>
<p>Crowley took a look at her and laughed. There were large wet spots across Aziraphale’s chest, and her sleeves were soaked even though she’d rolled them up. “I think I ended up making you take a bath with me anyway.”</p>
<p>Her angel pushed the braces off her shoulders and let them hang below her waist, then undid her remaining buttons. Crowley watched her undress, following with eager eyes as each layer was peeled away and folded up to rest on a nearby stack of books. Shirt first, then vest. She even unhooked her brassiere and set that aside, too.</p>
<p>Just because she was allowed to do such a thing now, Crowley leaned forward and kissed her angel’s heavy, gorgeous breasts when she came back to sit beside the bath.</p>
<p>“Careful,” Aziraphale laughed, “You’ll get my trousers soaked, too.”</p>
<p>Crowley raised her eyebrows. “I’ve never heard you complain about that before.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale fixed her with a long-suffering stare, the corners of her lips creeping up in a smile. “You are a wretched little tease with conditioner in her hair.”</p>
<p>“I am, and you love me,” Crowley said, the words tipping off of her tongue before she could think to worry about them.</p>
<p>“I do.” Aziraphale’s face broke into a radiant grin. “I love you very much. And you love me, too.”</p>
<p>“Always have,” she said, kissing her again. “Always will.”</p>
<p>“Get comfortable, love,” Aziraphale said, “I find I’d really like to get my hands on you.”</p>
<p>Crowley folded at the waist and pushed herself under the surface of the water, scrubbing at her scalp with her fingernails until her short-cropped hair felt stopped feeling slick. She emerged again, dripping and clean and smiling, and settled herself back against the neck pillow. Aziraphale was right there, the very first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. Leaning on the edge of the bath, waiting for her to surface so she could brush Crowley’s wet hair away from her forehead and press a string of kisses across her cheekbones.</p>
<p>The angel’s hands were gentle but thorough. They started behind her ears, rubbing soapy circles into the base of her skull and down the column of her spine. Her shoulders and back came next, and after Aziraphale had finished with her heavy, squeezing, massage-like rubdown she scratched her blunt nails all over Crowley’s skin in a way that made the snake part of her brain very happy. Then, Aziraphale moved to Crowley’s chest. The way she touched her was still casual, mostly, still focused on relaxation and cleanliness, but Crowley noticed the way that the angel’s soapy palms lingered over her small breasts, the way her fingertips trailed over her nipples with each pass across her skin.</p>
<p>Once everything above the water line had been washed, Aziraphale dragged her stool away from the head of the bath and over towards the middle.</p>
<p>“Leg?” She asked, lathering her hands up again.</p>
<p>Crowley paused, then lifted one of her legs up out of the water and into Aziraphale’s waiting grasp. It was an odd thing, having her feet washed by the angel. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, of course. The first time had been in the bookshop, too, just downstairs from where she sat now. Her soles still bore the leathery scars from that night eight decades ago, and it was hard not to think about air raid sirens and the strong smell of ointment as Aziraphale’s hands gentled over the site of old wounds and the patches of scales that clung to the tops of her feet. This was different, though. There was something more open in this, in the way the angel’s hands held Crowley’s calves as she worked, in the steady pleasure of a bar of soap kneading at her arches.</p>
<p>There was something playful in it, too, in the way Aziraphale wiggled each toe and rolled her ankles this way and that, an expression of mock seriousness on her face. It made Crowley feel a bit strange, the thought that Aziraphale could be so light with her in spite of who they were and where they’d been, that she was so comfortable touching Crowley’s body that she could make little games of it for their secret amusement. She was surprised to find that she didn’t mind it, that the idea of being found to be so utterly non-threatening as to have her toes wiggled in the bath didn’t make her itch to bring out her claws and fangs and bristle against it. She found she was simply happy that Aziraphale was relaxed around her enough that she could have fun like this.</p>
<p>When Aziraphale’s hands slipped below the surface of the water, they did so slowly. It might have once been alarming, being touched like that beneath a layer of bubbles too thick to see through. She didn’t always know where Aziraphale’s hands were, or where they were going, but she trusted the angel. Crowley closed her eyes and leaned back against the neck pillow, listening to the quiet patter of the rain on the windows as Aziraphale washed her belly and thighs.</p>
<p>That first tentative touch to her mons was expected, too. As much as it thrilled her, it was also something like a respite. A detour back to familiar territory. She might not yet know how to be gently lavished with nonsexual touch, but she had a better idea of how to do this. Crowley smiled and hummed her encouragement, shifted her hips against the bottom of the bath as Aziraphale idly ran her fingers through her pubic hair and stroked the tops of her thighs.</p>
<p>The first few minutes of sex could still be nerve-wracking, sometimes, in those moments before her lower jaws emerged when she didn’t yet know quite how long it would take for them to appear. That indeterminate stretch of time before her teeth bit into some toy and she didn’t have to worry about them biting anything else anymore. Crowley kept her thighs pressed tightly together and tried to enjoy the sensation for as long as she could, ignoring those first telltale movements inside her body as her jaws woke up and began to take notice.</p>
<p>A fingertip slipped between her labia, gentle and teasing, sliding back and forth in the narrow channel. Sometimes it slipped far enough through to nudge her clit, but it always pulled back before she could feel any real satisfaction. Without meaning to, Crowley let her thighs part by just a fraction, just enough to let her angel’s finger run a circle or two around her clit. She wanted to let her, wanted to chase that sensation right over the edge, but she couldn’t. Her jaws were moving inside her in earnest now, making those little twitching motions that meant danger was imminent. Reluctantly, Crowley opened her eyes and turned to face her angel.</p>
<p>“Aziraphale. Ah. Much as I hate to say this...” The angel's roving hands stilled. “You're getting close to being in biting range.”</p>
<p>“Oh! Well. If you’d like me to stop, I will. But if you’re enjoying yourself...”</p>
<p>“I am. Trust me on that. But...” Crowley laughed, one quick breath pushing out through her nose. “Well. The toys are all the way in the other room.”</p>
<p>“I could get them. Or summon them. Or...” Aziraphale trailed off, brows furrowing in thought. “I think I’ve had a thought, Crowley. The toys we use on your lower jaws... it feels good to bite into them, correct?”</p>
<p>“It does.”</p>
<p>“And they give you peace of mind that you won't accidentally bite me.”</p>
<p>“Yes...? Where are you going with this?”</p>
<p>“Do you like it when I stroke your lower jaws? Or, I suppose a better question would be: is the reason you haven’t wanted to hold me in your jaws purely due to fear that I will be injured, or is the thought itself uncomfortable?”</p>
<p>Crowley sat fully upright, water sloshing around her. “What do you mean, <i>hold you in my jaws?</i> They can break through bone, Aziraphale. Of course I wouldn’t want to <i>hold you in them.</i> I wouldn’t want you anywhere near them if I thought they were going to bite you!”</p>
<p>Aziraphale nodded, her voice calm and calming. “Of course not, love. I know that. I’ve just had an idea and I want to know if it’s worth pursuing. Please, feel free to dismiss it in totality if you don’t like the way it sounds.”</p>
<p>“Go on,” Crowley allowed, still cautious.</p>
<p>“If there was a way for me to touch your lower jaws directly, no toys involved, and you had a guarantee that I wouldn’t be hurt by them... would you be interested in such a thing?”</p>
<p>“In theory, yes. Absolutely. Love the toy, but wouldn’t turn down another safe option for sex.” She paused, then pushed the rest of the thought out all in a rush. “In practice... I don’t know. I just don’t see how we could get that guarantee. Unless you’ve figured out how to make me a new set of genitals entirely, or know how to... dunno. Paralyze my lower jaws so they can’t snap shut, or something... I don’t really see it working.”</p>
<p>There was something tender and a little bit hurt in Aziraphale’s expression. “I’m not talking about changing you at all, dearheart. I’m talking about changing me.”</p>
<p>“How so?”</p>
<p>“What if... it wasn’t my hand?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think your elbow would fare much better.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale ignored that. “Your lower jaws are part of your physical corporation. My hands are a part of mine. We can of course injure one another’s corporations, even to the point of discorporation. But if I were to <i>leave</i> my corporation... why, I’d be like a ghost. Unless you tried to use your powers on me, I daresay nothing your physical body could do would be able to hurt my celestial form at all.”</p>
<p>Crowley realized that her mouth had fallen slightly open as she listened to Aziraphale lay out the beginnings of what was starting to sound like a truly mad scheme. She closed it, then said, “Just checking. You’re not planning to discorporate yourself for a shag, are you?”</p>
<p>“Oh, goodness no. Just my hand.” Aziraphale held one up and wiggled its fingers, seemingly under the impression that Crowley might have somehow forgotten what one looked like. “I was thinking about pushing just a little of myself past the confines of my physical body... for a shag.”</p>
<p>The word sounded strange coming out of the angel’s mouth, and Crowley had to smile. “Wouldn’t you just pass right through me? The last time I saw you out of your body you were all... wavery. See-through. You didn’t look terribly substantial.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t a good memory. She didn’t let herself think about it for too long.</p>
<p>“Yes, I thought about that. Really, though. That <i>had</i> only been my first time being fully disembodied while on Earth. I’ve had more practice since then. I think I know how to slide myself in and out of myself a bit better now.” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “That first night in your flat comes to mind.” Even in the privacy of Aziraphale’s bathroom, there were some things they never named out loud.</p>
<p>Now Crowley’s mind had seemingly latched onto the idea, and it seemed insistent on carrying her forward along with it.</p>
<p>“We do it with our wings all the time. Exert that level of control, I mean,” she clarified. She surprised herself a little as she spoke, her lips betraying the connections her brain had been building faster than she could run them through her usual filters of snark, emotional distance, and common sense. “They’re a part of our true forms, and we can choose how corporeal we want them to be. Or tuck them away altogether. But we can touch them with our hands when they’re out.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale clapped her hands together. “Yes! That’s it exactly! And they <i>can</i> register sensation when they’re somewhat corporeal, I know they can. If you were to stroke my feathers with your fingers, it would be muted, but I would feel it.”</p>
<p>An appealing image, for certain, but there were more pressing concerns that had to be addressed first.</p>
<p>“Can they feel pain?” Crowley asked. More troublesome memories attempted to surface, this time of Hell. Like before, she pushed those right back into the vault and locked the door behind them. “From, ah. Non-supernatural sources, I mean. I won't be lighting my nethers ablaze with Hellfire, don’t worry.”</p>
<p>“I’ve banged my wings on enough doorframes by now to know,” Aziraphale deadpanned. “They really should make those wider.”</p>
<p>“But does it <i>hurt?”</i></p>
<p>“Not particularly. I feel a sort of blunt impact, but no pain.”</p>
<p>“Could I even feel you, then?”</p>
<p>“Oh, I’m certain. I know for a fact that they can, er… Have an effect on physical objects.”</p>
<p>“Really?”</p>
<p>The angel hesitated, gave into her now-rare habit of flicking her eyes towards Heaven before speaking.</p>
<p>“I’ve… I’ve never told anyone this…” Aziraphale made a sort of a pained grimace. “Not even Gabriel. <i>Definitely</i> not Gabriel. But… do you recall my duties related to the announcement of a certain… notable birth?”</p>
<p>Crowley blinked, feeling very certain that her eyes must look rather huge right about now. “Are you talking about <i>Jesus of Nazareth,</i> by chance, Aziraphale? What did you do, tip the manger over?”</p>
<p>“No! Of course not! I wasn’t even present for that. Heaven had me out in the fields alerting the shepherds… where I had a bit of a rough landing. Gave one of those poor shepherds a bit of a thump.” Aziraphale bravely attempted to continue speaking, even after Crowley’s cackling laughter threatened to drown her out. “It wasn’t my fault! I was terribly out of practice with flying, and… honestly! From the air, all flocks of sheep look functionally identical. And I <i>did</i> apologize to the fellow!”</p>
<p>“Aziraphale,” Crowley wheezed.</p>
<p>“Yes?”</p>
<p>“I love you. I love you so bloody much.” She leaned out of the tub, arms dripping on the tile floor, and pulled her angel in for a kiss.</p>
<p>“So,” Aziraphale said, once Crowley had calmed down from both the kissing and laughter, “What do you think?”</p>
<p>“We should do a test,” Crowley said. Against her better judgement, she was cautiously starting to feel like this might be an idea with promise.</p>
<p>“Are you suggesting that you bite my wing?” Aziraphale asked, eyebrow cocking.</p>
<p>“No!” Crowley laughed, then thought about it for a moment. “But biting your finger might work.”</p>
<p>“…With your mouth? Or…?”</p>
<p><i>“Yes,</i> with my mouth. You pest.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale kissed her on the forehead, then turned her attentions towards her own hand.</p>
<p>“It should just be a simple matter of… concentrating…” she said, staring intently as she flexed and bent her fingers.</p>
<p>Slowly, very slowly, something began to change. There was the sharp scent of ozone, like the aftermath of one of the angel’s blessings only much more powerful. A small, faint, glowing <i>something</i> appeared at the end of her index finger, bright as sunlight pouring through a crack in a wall.</p>
<p>At first, the little thing was as unsubstantial as a tendril of mist. As Crowley watched, though, it became stronger and more opaque. It never developed any hard edges to define its boundaries, ephemeral as it was—Crowley would have sworn she saw movement within it, smaller shapes that grew and collapsed and warped into infinitely delicate patterns. In the physical space, it only extended perhaps an inch or two beyond Aziraphale’s corporation, but even that scant trace of the angel’s true celestial body felt like it had a gravity to it that was stronger than that of the planet itself.</p>
<p>Crowley managed to tear her eyes away for just a moment and was rewarded with the sight of Aziraphale’s nervous, joyful smile, and it was every bit as beautiful as what she’d just looked away from.</p>
<p>“I think it’s working,” Aziraphale whispered, raising her hand to the level of Crowley’s face.</p>
<p>At the first touch of her lover’s real body against her lower lip, Crowley was powerless to do anything but open her mouth and take her inside. Her tongue was already splitting down the center, wrapping itself around Aziraphale’s tendril and squeezing around it. It was hot to the touch, far warmer than the blood-heat of her own mouth, though not nearly hot enough to really hurt her.</p>
<p>“Can you feel me?” Aziraphale asked her, watching with open interest as Crowley sucked at her finger and the crackling, humming, writhing energy spilling off it. The answer was, of course, a resounding <i>yes,</i> but Crowley found she didn’t want to do more than close her eyes and nod. “I think you’re meant to be biting me now, love.”</p>
<p>She pulled her tongue back out of the way and slowly bit down, adding more and more pressure when Aziraphale showed no signs of discomfort until she was biting hard enough to break through bone... were she biting something physical, that is. Her teeth seemed to be doing no damage at all to the little tendril. She smiled around Aziraphale’s finger as she eased off again.</p>
<p>
  <i>This might actually work.</i>
</p>
<p>“Could you… could you use your fangs?” Aziraphale asked her, her words halting and tentative. “It’s just. Well. Your other teeth are quite sharp, it seems. And… If we’re to be doing a proper test, we should… should make this as close to accurate as the real thing would be.”</p>
<p>It sounded almost offhanded, but there was something furtive in the way the angel was looking at her when she asked for it, in the small splotches of pink that bloomed on her cheeks as she spoke, that made Crowley start to look at her partner’s request in a new light. Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later, when she bared her teeth and let them sharpen and Aziraphale <i>gasped.</i> Crowley bit down a second time, harder than before and faster, and felt her fangs sink ever so slightly into the unearthly matter of Aziraphale’s tendril… but the angel’s face betrayed no sign of pain. Excitement, definitely, but no pain.</p>
<p>Crowley let the forks of her tongue slip around her own sharp teeth to tease at the seam of where Aziraphale’s celestial body emerged from her corporation, then released her entirely and gave her partner the smuggest smile she could muster.</p>
<p>“You like my fangs,” she said, matter of fact. And then, because she <i>knew</i> Aziraphale and saw the angel’s lips starting to move to form an excuse, added, “Yes, yes. I know you love and adore all of me. But you <i>like</i> my fangs.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale paused, and then, without a hint of shame, said, “I do.”</p>
<p>She blinked, the implications of that statement slowly catching up with her. All along, she’d thought Aziraphale liked the more demonic, monstrous aspects of her body because… well, because Aziraphale loved her and was attracted to the rest of her, and was willing to like the sharp parts, too. This new revelation provided an alternative explanation: that Aziraphale enjoyed Crowley’s demonic aspects not because they came bundled with the total package but because Aziraphale was actually <i>attracted</i> to the sharp parts of her, too, entirely on their own merits.</p>
<p>Crowley was also, at the same time, realizing that there were parts of Aziraphale that were strange and inhuman as well, and that she <i>very much liked them, too.</i></p>
<p>“Well,” she finally said. “Duly noted.”</p>
<p>“Tell me your thoughts, love,” Aziraphale said, stroking Crowley’s cheek with her hand as the tendril faded back into her corporation. “What do you think? Will that work for our purposes?”</p>
<p>“I… think it could. You said it didn’t hurt when I bit down, and that’s the assurance I needed. You felt… good in my mouth, too. Really good,” she admitted. “I could sink into you a bit with my fangs in a way I think might feel bloody excellent downstairs. But…”</p>
<p>“But?”</p>
<p>“I worry, though, about your corporation. Your finger was so close to my teeth. I was able to avoid biting you because I aimed well, but my lower jaws… they just tend to bite wherever they please, no input from me. I wouldn’t like to clamp down on your hand by mistake.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale thought about it for just a moment, then said another shockingly mad thing. “What if I got rid of my hand?”</p>
<p>“…What.”</p>
<p>“Don’t act like you’ve never turned your heartbeat off, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, wiggling her fingers at her. “Or vanished your Effort. All our body parts are optional for us, so why not my hand?”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry. All I can imagine here is you just calmly unscrewing your hand at the wrist like a lightbulb.”</p>
<p>“It wouldn’t be like that at all! I’d just simply fold it back into the void where I keep my wings until I need to pull it out again.”</p>
<p>“Oh, is that all?” Crowley drawled, her eyes still a bit wide.</p>
<p>“Just about,” Aziraphale said, bright and sunny as anything as she brushed her hands off on her trouser legs. “Then I’d be free to touch you with my essence as much as you’d like me to, with no worry of your teeth coming into contact with any physical skin or bone.”</p>
<p>“And you’d just… wrap your buzzing angel tendrils all around my lower jaws, then? Hold them open, give them something to bite against?”</p>
<p>Even as she was speaking the words aloud, the image of it began to feel less and less ridiculous and more like something she desperately wanted. Aziraphale’s true form, coiled around the most fragile, dangerous parts of her body. For the first time in several minutes, since they paused any actual physical touching to strategize and test and plan, Crowley felt the muscles in her lower jaws twitch and shift.</p>
<p>“Go on, then,” she murmured, dragging Aziraphale in for a kiss. “Do your sexy degloving act and let’s see if I can bite you.”</p>
<p>“Right,” Aziraphale said, the flippant term obviously having given her pause. “Well, I don’t know how this will look. It shouldn’t be terribly gruesome, but I’ll do it under the water so as not to put you off.”</p>
<p>“Angel,” Crowley said, “I honestly don’t think you <i>can</i> put me off.”</p>
<p>Still, after she finished moving her stool around to the head of the bath again so she could rest her chin on Crowley’s shoulder, Aziraphale dutifully reached her arms down beneath the bubbles and water nearly up to her elbows. In her peripheral vision, Crowley watched her face scrunch up with that same concentrating expression from before. Very carefully, she made a motion over her one of her bare forearms like she was rolling up a nonexistent sleeve.</p>
<p>“There we… go…” Aziraphale murmured under her breath. “Nice and tucked away.”</p>
<p>Heat bloomed under the water as something down there began to glow. The light seemed to be gold and sky-blue in turns, pulsing and shifting. It was so obscured by the bubbles that Crowley couldn’t see the shape of it, but it was bright. Warm. Tingly.</p>
<p>Aziraphale caressed Crowley’s hip and thigh with both of her hands, and Crowley could feel the difference in them immediately. The angel’s right hand, her dominant one, was the same as it had always been. Still familiar, still physical. She had five fingers and a palm, neat fingernails, muscle and bone and skin and blood that flowed through it all.</p>
<p>Her left hand, though, if one could even still call it a <i>hand,</i> was pure energy. It had a shape to it, sure, but bugger if Crowley would have been able to describe what that shape was. It didn’t have fingers, precisely, but there were several of those tendrils branching out from it like the one Crowley had in her mouth before, only these were longer and perhaps a bit more substantial. They were more flexible than fingers, soft and humming, and she couldn’t even count how many of them there were as the number seemed to change from moment to moment.</p>
<p>The words <i>“Dexter”</i> and <i>“Sinister”</i> floated uselessly to the surface of Crowley’s scattered mind as she felt Aziraphale’s ethereal left hand move to pet at her mons. The angel’s right hand, likely for Crowley’s comfort, stayed well out of biting range as it massaged Crowley’s inner thigh, coaxing her legs oh so gently apart.</p>
<p>“How does it feel, love?” Aziraphale murmured against the side of Crowley’s face.</p>
<p>Just then, her left hand slipped in between Crowley’s labia and all Crowley could do in response was gasp. It was nowhere near as substantial as Aziraphale’s usual touch, but it was vivid and intense and pulsing, almost like the spray of a shower head against her cunt—just on this side of too hot, but diffuse enough that it was immensely pleasurable.</p>
<p>The difference was that, unlike a shower head, this tiny fraction of Aziraphale’s true form apparently featured a number of soft, teasing little tendrils that stroked and tugged and pushed and pulled at her, all moving independently and with intent. Some of them gently held her labia open, others slithered around her clit, and some seemed content to slide back and forth on either side of her entrance, clearly trying to coax her jaws out into the open.</p>
<p>“Good, it’s good,” Crowley hissed, her hips canting under the water at the strength of the sensation.</p>
<p>The thought occurred to her that these little tendrils might behave like her own lower jaws, seeking sensation wherever they could find it independent of Aziraphale’s wishes. That they might decide to slip inside her, past her jaws where her body was tight with muscle and bone and any attempted intrusion felt so very <i>wrong.</i> She dismissed the worry as nothing but irrationality, a paranoid interjection from an anxious mind that had been trained for six thousand years to always show her the worst case scenario as a way to keep her alive. Crowley was safe here, and she was free, and she was in Aziraphale’s arms. These tendrils were wholly under Aziraphale’s control, and Aziraphale knew the things Crowley liked and the things she didn’t. Even though everything about this was new and unfamiliar, Crowley realized she wasn’t actually afraid, not even a little.</p>
<p>Crowley’s lower jaws twitched and flexed inside her, and that was all the warning she received before they slid out of her body with their usual startling speed. Usually when they did that, she experienced one of two sensations: either her teeth sank into the thick rubber of one of their toys, or they snapped fruitlessly against nothing, the shock of each pointless bite sending unpleasant, juddering impacts all the way up the structure of the jaws and deep into her body. This time, though, they experienced something wholly unexpected.</p>
<p>As her jaws bit at Aziraphale’s left hand, the angel’s true form moved just as fast to grab right back at her. All of those soft, pliant little tendrils twisted through the water and wrapped around Crowley’s lower jaws, squeezing back against them even as they tried to snap shut. They didn’t immobilize them, no, Crowley’s jaws could still <i>move,</i> could still bite down against the resistance like they did around one of their rubber toys, but those less-than-physical curls of energy still had an angel’s strength flowing through them. Not just <i>any</i> angel’s, either. A <i>principality,</i> built to guard and fight and wield a blazing sword.</p>
<p>As the tendrils wrestled with her lower jaws, tugging them just a fraction of an inch apart, Crowley remembered that fucking statue of Hercules they’d seen in the museum last week. The helpless roar frozen on the snarling face of the lion as it was overpowered. Aziraphale had joked about it, but had she been wanting to try something like this even as early as then? Maybe not with the angelic essence, since this seemed like a new idea, but how long had she wanted to touch Crowley like this? How much did she think about Crowley’s body, even when they were parted?</p>
<p>Crowley’s jaws bore down again, harder this time. They almost closed shut entirely, but then the tendrils began to spread them open, slow and inexorable. She heard Aziraphale’s laughter against the wet skin of her neck, low and husky and dark with arousal, and Crowley was immediately made aware of the fact that this was <i>play,</i> an encore of their little game of tug of war from this morning. If Aziraphale wanted to, she could bind Crowley’s lower jaws so tightly they couldn’t move a millimeter. She could force them apart as wide as she wanted them to be and hold them there, open and helpless, or else bind them shut and keep them sealed. Twist around them, give them nothing to bite against, give them no satisfaction at all.</p>
<p>She wouldn’t, though, not ever, and that was what was so fucking <i>hot</i> about this. Aziraphale was playing with her, teasing her, because she wanted Crowley to <i>enjoy it.</i> She wanted to be held in Crowley’s lower jaws and she wanted to hold them in turn. She wanted her teeth to bite down, sharp and hard, around tendrils of energy that they could never hurt, and then push back against them and make them work to keep their hold.</p>
<p>It was an exquisite sensation, almost dizzying, made all the better by the low vibrating hum that emanated from Aziraphale’s true form and sank into Crowley’s body, turning everything from her hipbones down into liquid pleasure.</p>
<p>Aziraphale’s arms shifted position, one of them slipping over around Crowley’s other shoulder so she could hug her from behind and reach her cunt more easily with both hands. Her right hand, the one that was still human-shaped, slipped in behind the other one and sought out Crowley’s clit. Two of her ethereal tendrils were still there, twisting and teasing, and she joined them with two of her fingers. The physical realness of them was almost startling after being first touched only by parts of Aziraphale’s body that were half-corporeal. By comparison, this sensation and pressure was both direct and familiar.</p>
<p>Crowley only became aware of the noises she was making when she heard Aziraphale murmuring encouragement against the column of her throat.</p>
<p>“That’s it, love,” her angel sighed. “I’ve got you, love, I have you. Let me hear you, let go and lose yourself. You make such pretty noises, love. I want to hear you…”</p>
<p>She did as she was bid, letting her breathing come out as hard and ragged as it wanted to, letting her whines pitch higher and her moans rumble in the back of her throat and around her forking tongue.</p>
<p>“I wish I had two more hands,” Aziraphale told her. “Your breasts are so beautiful. I’d hold them both, tease your nipples until you screamed. You like me to pinch them hard, I know, but I’d make you beg me to do more than rub and squeeze and stroke…”</p>
<p>“Y’could, y’know,” Crowley managed to say through her own ragged panting. “Could give yourself… <i>nnnnng, ah, fuck!</i> Could give yourself as many as you… as you wanted. Bypassed ten fingers already, why—<i>oh</i>—why not hands?”</p>
<p>“Maybe next time, dove,” Aziraphale said to her, and already the idea of <i>next time</i> sent a thrill through Crowley’s eager, love-drunk mind. “Here, darling. Bring your hands up. Touch yourself. Whatever feels good for you, do it. I want every part of you to <i>sing.”</i></p>
<p>Crowley pulled her hands up out of the water from where she’d been squeezing at the sides of her own thighs, cupped her own breasts with them, dripping wet and wiry and practiced at this kind of touch. She was not Aziraphale, she would not tease herself. She roughly squeezed and groped, pinched as hard as she knew she could take until her nipples were stinging with sharp, exquisite pleasure.</p>
<p>Aziraphale’s words melted into kisses, hot and open-mouthed and hungry. She painted them up and down Crowley’s throat and shoulder, nipping and licking in time with her own busy hands.</p>
<p>Through her haze of arousal, an image appeared in Crowley’s imagination. It was constellation of ecstasy, a long line of pleasure written in fire, drawn up Crowley’s body to map out all the places driving her out of her mind. The line started at her cunt, tied around her pulsing, straining lower jaws like a string, so very like those hot, buzzing tendrils that had them so fully ensnared. The line travelled up to her clit, where Aziraphale’s fingers were flicking and rubbing at her with devastating precision. It crawled through her belly, tight and squirming with arousal, up over her breasts where her own hands rolled her nipples into two points of pleasure-pain bright as stars. The end of the string was in Aziraphale’s mouth, wrapped around the angel’s tongue as she lapped at Crowley’s sensitive throat. Had Aziraphale ever played the harp in Heaven? She plucked this string with such skill, playing the instrument of Crowley’s body like she was made to do it. The music she made was so sweet Crowley almost wept to feel it.</p>
<p>Crowley folded in on herself as she came, lurching forward as spasms of pleasure wracked her body. Her jaws squeezed tight around Aziraphale’s unearthly tendrils, the pattern erratic and thrashing, and Aziraphale let them bite, dropping any resistance against them so she could stroke and pet them until at last they slowed and stilled. Aziraphale held her for a while after that, leaned over the rim of the bath, her warm breasts pressed against Crowley’s shoulder blades.</p>
<p>Eventually, as they always did, Crowley’s lower jaws released her lover’s hand and retreated back inside her body. Aziraphale moved her hands again under the water and bubbles, repeating her magic act in reverse. The touch of those hot, buzzing tendrils subsided, the blue-gold glow dimmed and disappeared.</p>
<p>Because her mind was still trained for catastrophe, Crowley experienced one last moment of irrational terror. She was suddenly afraid that the hand Aziraphale would lift from the water would be bloody and mangled, chewed to pieces by Crowley’s cunt fangs like it was sometimes in her nightmares. It wasn’t, of course. The hands Aziraphale pulled from the water were both humanoid, dripping bathwater, and as unblemished as they’d been before she put them in. Aziraphale cracked her knuckles, stretched out her fingers, and then used them to brush the damp hair away from Crowley’s forehead.</p>
<p>“Did you like it?”</p>
<p>“Did I like it?” Crowley repeated, incredulous. “Aziraphale, I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard in my <i>life,</i> of course I liked it! My only question at this point is about what <i>other</i> weird, devastatingly arousing secrets you have lurking ‘neath that angelic exterior.”</p>
<p>“Well,” Aziraphale said, chuckling. “I suppose you’ll just have to find out.”</p>
<p>“I <i>plan</i> to find out… just as soon as I can stand up again. I think you’ve thoroughly vanished all of my bones from the waist down. My legs are just jelly, Aziraphale.”</p>
<p>“You say that like you had a consistent skeletal structure to begin with.”</p>
<p>“Touché.” Crowley swiveled around on her bum to kiss the tip of Aziraphale’s nose. “I think I might like to get out now. My feet are so pruney I’m worried they’ll slough right off, and I’m not due for another shed for another decade at least.”</p>
<p>“Let’s get you rinsed off, then, love.”</p>
<p>The process for getting out of the bath was only slightly less involved than the process for getting into it had been, though it did at least pass more quickly. Aziraphale unplugged the bath and let the water drain away, pulled the shower head down to rinse away the last of the bubbles clinging to her skin. Extinguished the candles with another wave of her hand and let them drift gently back down to the floor. Paused to let Crowley retrieve her glass from the suction-cup holder and down the last of her wine.</p>
<p>Crowley’s hair was almost completely dry by now, having been above water for quite some time, but Aziraphale gave its damp ends a gentle pat dry anyway. Then, she was helping Crowley to her feet and out of the bath with a steady hand and wrapping her up in the devastatingly fuzzy, toasty robe from atop the radiator. Crowley felt as if she was about to either melt into a puddle or start hovering an inch or two above the ground.</p>
<p>Back in the bedroom, Aziraphale stripped off the rest of her own clothes and crawled into bed naked beside Crowley, inviting her to lie across her chest.</p>
<p>“I want to make you feel good like that,” Crowley mumbled, smiling like a drunk.</p>
<p>“Later,” Aziraphale said, smiling back at her. “But for now, how about we have us a cuddle? Maybe even a nap. There’s no rush, love. We have all the time in the world.”</p>
<p>Crowley nodded and fumbled for the tie to the bathrobe, pulling the loose knot apart. She thought about wriggling out of the robe entirely, but it <i>was</i> awfully warm and fuzzy, so she just left it open instead. Feeling very content indeed, she stretched out across Aziraphale’s body, skin to naked skin, and fell asleep to the sound of raindrops on the windowpanes.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><b>What Does "Sexy Degloving" Mean?</b><br/>Basically, Aziraphale pushes part of her corporation back so some of her true form can slip out in place of a physical hand that might otherwise get bitten by Crowley’s lower jaws. It’s not very graphically described, and actually isn’t seen from Crowley’s POV. Crowley jokingly calls this maneuver “sexy degloving,” but there’s <b>absolutely no injury</b> to anyone happening in this fic. (That will likely stay the case through this series as a whole, but I can’t promise that right now. It’s getting very domestic in there and one of them might get a hot glue gun burn or something in the future.)<br/></p>
<hr/>
<p>The chapter titles are taken from a (modified for pronouns) quote from the poem <a href="https://wordsfortheyear.com/tag/caitlyn-siehl/">Start Here</a> by Caitlyn Siehl.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p> When is a monster not a monster?<br/>Oh, when you love it.<br/>Oh, when you used to sing it to sleep.<br/>Here are your upturned hands.<br/>Give them to him and watch how he prays<br/>like he is learning his first words.</p>
</blockquote>The whole poem has Good Omens vibes that are off the chart, go read it.<p>So, it seems I’m continuing to have a lot of fun writing this thing, even as it goes off the rails a little bit at the last minute and steers me into some vaguely tentacle-y territory. What’s more fun than one-way monsterfuckery? <i>Mutual monsterfuckery.</i> Aziraphale gets to go a little more inhuman, as a treat. (For Crowley.) (And for me.)<br/>As a heads up, the tentacle-ish stuff is more than likely going to continue. Do not fear, though, friends. The discovery that Aziraphale can use her true form to touch Crowley does not mean this is the last we’ve seen of Monsieur KONG—after all, does one stop liking toys because fingers are fun sometimes? It’s just one more tool in their sexy, sexy tool belt.</p>
<p>This fic is really important to me because it’s letting me play around with themes of exploration and creativity within sex in a way that I really can’t do as easily in stories that are more plot heavy. There’s no current end in sight for this series, I’m just going to keep writing them having fun together and finding new ways to love on each other as long as the muse for this keeps visiting me. Sex isn’t one-size-fits all, after all, and I’m looking forward to finding out where this story takes them (and me) next.<br/>Have a good remainder of your December, lovely readers. I hope 2021 treats you all kindly.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The title for this fic once again came to me via the diabolical genius of <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liquid_Lyrium/profile">Liquid_Lyrium.</a> It’s taken from Shakespeare’s <i>The Tempest</i> (Act III scene i) and the fuller version of the quote is: <i>“[I weep] At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer / What I desire to give, and much less take / What I shall die to want.”</i> Let your gf be nice to you, Crowley. You deserve it.</p><p>I’m not sure how many more fics I’ll write in this series, but I’m having fun writing it. It lets me indulge in some low-conflict silliness and get creative with my smut writing. If you want to send me ideas/prompts, my inboxes on both Ao3 and <a href="https://noodlefrog-omens.tumblr.com">Tumblr</a> are always open (no guarantee I’ll take any suggestions offered, but I like hearing them anyway). Ditto for if you just want to chat.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>